This may be my first and last post concerning babies. The only reason I’m bringing this up is because I apparently went on a drunken rant to an expecting couple at a wedding I attended over the weekend.

Sorry if you’re one of the people who read the title and thought I might be having a baby. For the foreseeable future, having a one-year-old nephew who I can build pillow forts with until he shits himself from laughter and then walk away as his parents have to change him is the closest I’m getting to being a dad.

But that’s not going to stop me from throwing around my two cents when it comes to naming your child.

Don’t get me wrong, you can name your baby whatever the hell you want. Call it Burger, Sesame or Yoga. Call it God’s Gift. Name it after two cardinal directions if you really must. The point is you can name your baby anything your heart desires.

What I’d like to attack in this post are the people who give expecting parents grief about what they’re going to name the baby.

Being that I’m a childless man, this situation is relatively new to me. But over the past few years as more of my friends got pregnant, I started to realize that the majority of them were unwilling to disclose the name before the baby fell out of the womb.

One couple I know made a game out of it where their friends could guess the name and get a prize if they got it right. So for a while I thought the purpose of this name-hiding was just to have some fun.

But then I heard that a lot of expecting parents don’t want to say the name publicly before the baby’s born because sometimes family members or close friends will criticize the name. Apparently people will openly question the name if they don’t like it?

I asked a close friend of mine once while she was pregnant what the deal was, and she literally said, “Well, sometimes friends and family have a lot of strong opinions so it’s just better to let the baby be born and give it the name we want before we tell people who might not love the name.”

To anyone who would tell expecting parents that they don’t like the name they’ve picked, I’d like to say you’re the true definition of an asshole.

Maybe I should make fun of the expecting couples a little bit for being scared of these dissenting opinions, but I understand sometimes it’s just easier not to create controversy or set yourself up for criticism.

But for the lowlifes who would tell a pregnant friend or relative that they’ve picked a bad name, I think you should learn to mind your own business and shut up for nine months….or have your tongue cut out if you just can’t keep quiet.

I don’t see any difference between this phenomenon and a friend showing up at your new house for the first time and saying how ugly or small it is.

That’s scum of the earth type stuff right there.

I can’t wait to have a kid some day. The moment I know what the name’s going to be, every family member, friend and distant acquaintance is going to know. And I honestly hope someone tries to suggest that maybe I should pick a different name. That person will be immediately excommunicated from my life. Never talked to again. You could be a friend, one of my relatives or one of my girlfriend’s relatives. You’re done if you try to tell me what I should or should not name my baby.

Better yet, what I’ll probably do is try to figure out what name each person in my life would hate the most and then tell that person that’s what I’m naming my kid.

If you’re a good friend who’s recently been through a horrible breakup, well don’t get mad, but we just love the name of your ex so much that we’re giving our kid that name.

If you’re one of my religious grandparents, well, you may not love this, but we decided Lucifer is a beautiful name for our baby boy.

 

(Deep breath)

Sorry for that unwanted tirade of a post, but it just boggles my mind that there are people out there who think there’s nothing wrong with this.

Expecting parents of the future, don’t be afraid to disclose the name you’ve chosen ahead of time and then start making a list of people whose funerals you won’t be attending some day because they decided to give you advice on the name.