wherefore art thou Nedrun?

How gratuitous is this?

A little funny thing - when I was looking for baby names, I looked through a stupid American baby name book that had lots of names that were not real names, more capitalised words, like 'Komic' - humorous person' - no, that's not a name, that's a job with a K instead of C. But my favourite was 'Nedrun - 'difficult'. Imagine for a second that for some reason you were actually moved to name your child Nedrun. Would you go through with it knowing it meant 'difficult'?

How do you feel about going out with someone who has the same name as your parent? Parents? I had a dalliance with a guy once, whose father's name was Joe. I couldn't deal with that personally - it bothers me that my husband shares the same initial as my father - when I write it in lists etc, I can see my mother writing the same, it's uncomfortable.

However, my father in law was named, shall we say for the purposes of this post, Donald, but known to all as Don. My mother in law also has a brother Don. My husband, the oldest son, has Donald as a middle name. His brother is named Donald, and was always known as such, except by his school friends, who called him, shall we say, Dosh, which is what I met him as.

When he went to college and work, he also became Don because that's what people called him. I find that weird - that's his Dad, not him. I wouldn't have that, personally. I panic when people insist on leaving the a off the end of my name. So he met his wife, and she joined in the gang of those who call him Don - imagine my surprise at finding out her father is also called Don. And it's now their son's middle name.

I do understand the point of keeping a family name in the family, and I understand the sentiment behind keeping your parents and grandparents honoured in your child's name. Personally now, it's not for me. I've worked at finding names for my children that are different, hopefully there won't be two others in their class in school - though despite the alarm my son's name has engendered, a friend stated that he's met THREE babies with the same name this year. Oops! I hope that's not because I asked for opinions about it on Rollercoaster. I'd like to share it with you, but I think I'll restrain myself and stick to my rule of non-disclosure of my kids' details, hard as it is. But I will say this: my mother in law declared that it was a 'gay cowboy name', like Brokeback mountain (I hope she never watches that, I'd hate for her to see the spitting on the hand scene!). But she should count her self lucky, I wanted to call him Jed.