What's in a Name?

I am almost 32 weeks pregnant and basically this bub could come anytime now. Am I organised? Hell, no! I have however started to accumulate the baby singlets and Bonds suits, wraps and baby towels, the bassinet is now assembled, as is all the other nursery furniture, yet my hospital bag is still to be packed.

This is bub number three, gender to be a surprise, and you would assume I would be a little more organised than this but one of our main dilemmas this time around is something a little more important - deciding on a name. After two little girls with beautifully exotic Italian first and middle names (my sister-in-law described them as sounding like glamorous Italian movie stars!), it is especially hard finding a new set of names should this baby be another girl. Our boys names have changed each time too - the original ones didn't sound as good when I did the playground test - you know, where you scream them out (after the girls names) as you pretend to be rounding them up at the playground.

What to do when we have exhausted our four favourite girls names? Someone suggested recycling the middle names ("no one ever uses them anyway") but I couldn't do that. We have found a couple of new names we had never considered before and think we may have found a winner. Adding to the pressure is that our little girls have cute nicknames - Gigi & Lulu - so we needed to find a name we could shorten suitably to two syllables to go with these two.

Our boys middle name is unchanged - named in honour of my husband's late father - so there is also the need to ensure the name we choose goes with this name as well. I would love to use my father's name but ironically, his name is very similar to my married surname so this would leave a little boy open to ridicule. Think John Johnson, or Tom Thompson, or Allen Allan (no offence if this is your name). My father does not mind that we won't be using his name - funnily enough, he has grown up with such a double name (I married a man with a surname not unlike my maiden name - are you lost yet?). Phew, this name business is hard work.

Just to give you a glimpse of how hard choosing names can be, hubby and I were discussing our names tonight - basically my job was to scour the baby name books and create a short list and then run them by him. Here is a sample of the conversation - and a perfect example of why I prefer to keep my baby names close to my chest until the little tacker arrives:

Me: "How about Mica?"
He: "That sounds like a car"
Me: "What about Milo?"
He: "That's sounds like a dog"
Me: "Levi?"
He: "Jeans"
Me: "Leonardo?"
He: "Di Capprio"
Me: "Paloma?"
He: "Sounds like a horse"
Me: "Adrianna?"
He: "Adrienne!" (think bad Sylvester Stallone accent in Rocky)
Me: "Emilio?"
He: "Emilio!" (think even worse Will Ferrell in Night at the Roxbury)

See what I have to deal with....any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!