what's your name, little girl, what's your name?

The day I wrote my last post, a major hurricane hit the Gulf Coast and subsequent flooding put most of the city of New Orleans underwater and into chaos. The disaster caused by the hurricane could be the mostly costly ever in United States history. It cost many people their lives and even more people lost everything they had. I don’t mean to make light of the events of that weather occurrence and its resulting destruction, but it may have cost my wife and I something as well.

Ever since we were pregnant with our first child we had some girl names that we liked. We had a boy name picked out (Nathan; Nate for short) that we were surely going to name the baby if it was a boy. Our boy name is no longer one we like and if this child is a boy, we may have a hard time naming him.

When our daughter was born, we hadn’t yet settled on a girl name. We liked Guinevere, Julia, and Daphne, but none were “for-sure” the name we wanted. When the nurse asked if she should put “Baby Girl” on the birth certificate, we said no and chose Natasha. Natasha was a name we liked and it’s the one we decided was right.

The other name we liked a lot went right along with Natasha, so if we had a second daughter, we had a name ready to go. The nicknames even sounded good together... Tasha and Trina. If you haven’t guessed it yet, our second girl name is Katrina. Yes, the name of the worst hurricane in U.S history. We aren’t so sure we want to name our child (if it turns out to be a girl again) Katrina. I imagine that for quite some time, people will question the choice of name.

This sucks. We already can’t find a single boy name that we like. Now, the girl name that we decided over a year ago might be taken from us as well. Arlene, Cindy, Emily, Gert, Irene, Maria, and even Ophelia. I bet that no one remembers these storms by April, but I have a feeling people will remember Katrina for a long time. I think we’ll keep it anyway. Who knows, maybe Ivan can be our boy name.