What’s in a Name?

It’s hard to name people. After all, they’re pretty much stuck with that name forever...well, unless they hate their name so much that they actually go through the trouble of legally changing it.

And now with Baby Shapiro #2 on the way, coming up with a name is even more difficult than last time because we don’t know if we’ve having a boy or a girl this time around (check out this previous posting if you missed the story), meaning we have to come up with two sets of names in preparation. Fortunately, we’re finally pretty close to a decision on boy names, but are still mostly undecided on girl names. Some people think we should go with another music-related name, but I don’t think we’re going to do that (I mean, “Melody” was borderline pretentious and/or self-indulgent enough!). But musical or not, the name should somehow complement Melody’s name when spoken next to it (as in “These are my daughters Melody and...”).

And then it came to me. About halfway through the 8 hour drive back from visiting my family in Southern California last week, I turned to Marcie and said, “I have the perfect solution. It’s a name that fully complements Melody’s name.”

The name:

Shmelody

I told Marcie that when we’re introducing are daughters, we can say, “This is Melody and Shmelody.”

I went on to say that we can even apply this concept to her middle name too: “I’d like you to meet my girls Melody Allison and Shmelody Shmallison.” In fact, the name even works with our last name: Shmelody Shmallison Shapiro.

And what was Marcie’s response to all this?

“Poor Shmelody.”