Exploring our Options

This post could be about a lot of things - most of them options that seem to be available in the United States but not so much here (where/how you want to give birth, quick and easy but healthy eating, infant car seats, etc) - but nothing so heavy as that this go around.  It's back to names...

I mentioned before that names are tough, and we have some extra requirements that make the decision a little more challenging, but there are some names that I can rule out no matter where I live.  The unfortunate thing is that most of them show up when you look up my name on Baby Center.

Now, there are a ton of pregnancy-related web sites out there.  I mean, a ton.  So pretty early on we just picked one and have stuck with it.  Baby Center sends out emails several times a week with various updates.  Every Thursday it tells me I have begun a new week and talks about Peanut's size and development.  Other days it is information about healthy recipes or pre-natal testing or...baby names.

As it turns out, I don't care what names Jamie Lynn Spears is considering, nor am I likely to look to the movie Twilight for naming inspiration.  However, I thought the "Baby Name Explorer" looked interesting, so I put on my explorer hat and went to check it out.  The deal is, you put a name in their name finder and then you can look for sibling names (because of course you want to coordinate your children's names as you do their outfits...), or you can look up "suggested names."  I have no idea where these suggestions are coming from, but I thought it would be fun to see what came up when I put my own name in the database.  You know, just for a lark. 

That was wrong.

In case you are curious, or you really wanted to name your next child Mamie but you felt it too embarrassing an homage (it's not...), these are some of the other options the Baby Name Explorer suggests that someone who was considering the name Mamie might also like (in no particular order, too hard to choose from the bounty...):

Hattie 

Queenie (I didn't think middle school could get worse, but I think this would do it)

Mabel

Maeve  (substitute teacher nightmare)

Pippa

Prudence (seriously?)

Maisie

Magnolia (oh sure...)

Mathilde

Pepper (not Salt?)

Pearl

Clementine (oh my darlin'...)

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Mamie ranks 5,894 on the list of popular names for Baby Center.  I'm sure 2010 will bounce me into the top 10.

At any rate, feel free to do your own exploring, but don't say you were not warned.