The name game.

I've been picking out baby names (no, I'm not going to have a baby right now, don't worry everyone) since I was about ten years old. Some constants have stayed on the (lengthy) list since that time; others have fallen off and been replaced in an ongoing fashion, year by year by year.

I think many girls secretly compile such lists so I don't feel quite as embarrassed admitting to it as I probably should.

(Many girls probably don't, however, go through each and every one of their parents' leftover baby name books and highlight those they like while simultaneously amending the entries if they are found to be incomplete.) (I haven't done that since I was twelve, so there's another thing for you all to not worry about.) (Not that anybody is worrying besides me, for whom it seems to be my natural state.)

Of course, your list changes when an actual last name attaches itself to those fantasies, and so recently one name in particular for a girl has risen up out of the pack to take its place as fore-runner. It's classic but rarely found; of an origin appropriate to the family; and lovely, of course.

So naturally, an author/artist whom I shall not identify but with whom I work and after whose work I would not like to name a future child has elected to change the appellation of her upcoming mermaid from something perfectly serviceable and acceptable to ... The Name.

It's not so much that I care if a--let's face it--forgettable picture book will feature a character of that same, unusual name.

It's that everyone will think I discovered it THERE!

As opposed to the fifteen years of research that have gone into this now-defunct decision.

But anyway, I'm halting all this preemptive gnashing of teeth by reminding myself that I'm not the one who has to pick a name in the coming months...

My boyfriend's sister is!!

Congratulations to Liz, her Chris, and Austin :) The world's cutest little family is growing by one.