A tale of two names

I have always felt that to name a baby, I had to see them first; get my hands on them, see little peeks at their personality. When I was pregnant with Leila I stuck to this firmly. Of course, I considered names and had a "short" list, but nothing was even near set in stone. For most of my pregnancy I really liked "Kathleen" (my grandmother's name, and my middle name), "Sameera", and "Yasmin" for girl's names. Something that would "work" in both English and Arabic was important to us. Boys names were harder, I couldn't even form a list. I loved "Ishaq", but it's too hard for American's (it's pronounced "iz-Hahk", though both the "H" and the "q" are not natural sounds in our language), and "Yahiya", the Arabic form of John (my dad's name), but it had the same problems. I also considered names like "Yasha" (Ukranian form of Joshua, though it'd work well in Arabic too), and "Idrees" and "Elyas". But nothing really felt right. You can imagine my joy when Leila was born a girl, I didn't have to go through long lists of boy's names and slap one on my son that I wasn't sure about. Still, I didn't want to name her the second I saw her. I wanted to stare at her for days, see what name really suited her. Kathleen was a name high on my list, but she just didn't look like a Kathleen. So, I resigned to staring and trying on different names. But my plans shifted. Leila was born with a heart condition and on our way to Children's Hospital we settled on "Leila". I felt a sense of urgency in naming her, as if having a name would tell her soul that she was wanted here on Earth and to stay put, I was so afraid of losing her. So Leila she became, our Leila Rose. And no other name would suit her better.

Through my pregnancy with Elyas I was more resigned to use "Kathleen" if I should have another girl; I felt like it was my "last chance" to use the name AND my due date actually fell on my grandmother's birthday. But when we had our fetal echo in October I was pretty sure I saw a penis on the screen. So I put more effort into boy's names. Around December I really started to feel I was carrying a "Jonas". The more I thought of it, the more the baby became Jonas to me. Now, I communicated this to Ali, and he liked the name. I didn't want to settle for sure, but settle or not, I started thinking of him as Jonas. Flash forward to a few days before his birth I brought the name up again and Ali didn't think he liked the name that much. I was so annoyed because I'd said to him in December to say if he didn't like the name because I was starting to think of the baby as Jonas. Well, Ali wanted to name him Elyas, after his uncle. So five days of uncertainty followed his birth. Both Ali and I are laid back people, but we're also stubborn. Eventually I gave in, and we named him Elyas. It suits him, but sometimes I look at him and think "Jonas?".

So, when we have another child, as we will likely have only one more, it seems I have come full circle on the naming thing. I am set in naming the child "Kathleen" if it is a girl, and should the child be a boy... well, then I'll be in a conundrum. I still love "Jonas", but that feels like it was Elyas' name, even though he didn't end up with it. I guess we'll have to see, if we should have another boy!