A Folger By Any Other Name

We know now with almost complete certainty that Sara's fetus is a girl. Which is bad news because of the names that she has been floating my way. The girl ones have all been pretty terrible.
We decided that we wouldn't put much effort into names until we knew the gender, so I guess now the floodgates are open. The only thing that we ever did talk about was two names that we both liked: Theodore and Macdougal. Both boy names. Macdougal comes with a whole story involving her pet name for me, while Theodore has been my pick for a while. Both names are solid. Not totally unique but also not exactly popular. They pass the sound test, and work well with Folger. They also both shorten very nicely, to Ted/dy(1) and Mac. But again, they're both boy names; we don't have any legit girl names ready to go.
There are three names that Sara has liked enough to present to me prior to this gender-unmasking: Minna, Matilda, and Veda. Maybe you find those names attractive; I do not. The first one is to pay respect to a relative of hers. Fine, use it as a middle name. Matilda is just an ugly name(2), and Veda sounds like the name of one of Capt Kirk's conquests on Star Trek. I looked up Veda and it's an Indian name, as in India. I actually like Indian names(3), especially for girls, I just think my wife happened to pick out one the worst ones.
I'm sure we'll find a nice name for our future girl, it just seems a lot more difficult at the moment. Assuming you are not going the traditional route, girl names seem more complicated and diverse than boy names. Maybe I'm inventing this, I don't know. I actually like using masculine or neutral names for girls. Names like Dakota or Murphy or Bill. (Just kidding on the last one, wouldn't that be something.) It feels like cheating, and it's just my lazy brain playing tricks on me, but I actually really like Theadora for a girl. The shortened forms aren't as good though: Dora or Thea, I assume, with Thea being either "thee-ah" or "thay-ah." Not bad, but not perfect either. The big problem is that if we use Theadora now, we couldn't use Theodore on a future boy. No, we're not going to be those weirdo parents who name their kids all similarly (though Dora and Teddy disguise their root similarities nicely).
It's a lot to think about.
I used to be really good to coming up with fake names to be used as aliases. You'd think that skill would translate to baby-naming, but I'm not sure it does. My favorite personal aliases are Mordecai Sinclair, Sebastian Parker, and of course Chuck Swanson. Those are A+ names. They also don't include the one name that is a prerequisite for our kid: Folger. Folger is not a perfect surname to match first names with. Phonetically, it's kinda heavy with the g in the middle. I've never had a problem with my own full name except that if you use the long form it does whatever is the opposite of "rolls off the tongue." It seeps into the tongue like leaves in a compost pile. We'll need to keep that in mind.


1. Here is where we had an honest disagreement. We both like Theodore, but Sara was somewhat adamant that the diminutive should be Theo, while I was just as adamant in favor of Teddy. My main point of argument: you can't have a white kid going by Theo. A white adult, most definitely, but not a kid. "The Cosby Show" pretty much killed that for all caucasians. Plus, doesn't Teddy just sound awesome for a little boy?
2. No offense to Ryan or the waitress at Bondi's, who is herself not ugly.
3. I had an honest infatuation with a girl for a couple years a while back, and while she was certainly very attractive, hindsight forces me to consider that a big part of it was her awesome name: Rajika. That is an attractive name.