These next few days are a time of beginnings: we’re coming up on a new year, a new presidential administration, a new trimester. They’re a time of closing out all the chores we’ve been putting off, and starting up new projects. One of our first tasks as a couple in the new year, while we’re still both on vacation, is to head to Ikea to start looking at baby furniture. Another task, for which we haven’t waited, is to think about what we want to name this kid.

We still don’t know the gender, of course. Technically speaking, some of the blood work which will be performed soon would tell us, but German law prohibits gender reveals to the parents before the 14th week. That’s when elective abortions become illegal; the goal is to prevent people from aborting if their child is of the gender they don’t favor. There’s a lot to say about that topic, but it’s all out of scope; the relevant information for us is that we won’t know the gender for another month. All that’s really relevant to us is that we need to build our names lists for either gender.

We’d both had ideas about how we’d go about choosing names, and so far, neither of ours have panned out. I still have an idea in my head for a web app which would use machine learning to infer your preferences after you rated a few dozen names, combine it with your partner’s preferences, and then present a list which should satisfy both of you, but that may or may not happen in time for this kid. Instead, what’s really happening is that Christina is subscribed to at least two subreddits and one newsletter which are all about kid names; she’s bought some books. She reads these whenever she gets a chance, and every once in a while she’ll ask me: “What do you think about this name?”

As we go through this process, I’m discovering to my surprise that I am extremely conservative, at least when it comes to naming my child. Before we learned she was pregnant, I’d imagined I would be pretty liberal about names, but it feels like every few days recently I’ve discovered a whole new category of names which I absolutely will not consider.

Some categories of name I will not consider:

• Biblical. I’m just not that religious. This is the only one I knew about at the beginning.
• Hyphenated double names (Betty-Sue; Anna-Katrina)
• Animals (Bear; Marlin/Marlon)
• Geographical features (River; Mountain)
• Astronomical features (Sky/Skye; Moon)
• Flowers (Lily; Rose)
• Trees (Holly; Laurel)
• Occupations (Sailor; Tailor/Taylor)
• Place names (Madison; Paris)
• Time Periods (Wednesday; June; Summer)
• Materials (Crystal; Jewel)
• Emotions (Hope; Joy)
• Virtues (Prudence; Chastity)
• Names including Apostrophes
• Nicknames. I have nothing against having a nickname; I just refuse to name my kid anything which is itself the nickname for something else.

This proliferation of eliminated categories is actually probably a good thing! The way I see it, there’s this huge search space of names out there, most of which I would never give my child. Discovering entire categories to eliminate lets me discard tons of bad names very quickly, letting us focus more quickly on the ones we both like.

As things stand, we’re building up lists of ones which really stand out for both of us. We’re both still subconsciously convinced that we’re having a girl; the girls’ name list had four entries before the boys’ had any, and I halfway feel like that one was put on just to get something on there. We’ll have to see what happens if we find out we’re actually having a boy; they’re much harder to find good names for!

Of course, all this goes only for first names. Middle names are another game entirely. I’m kind of leaning towards “the Conqueror”, regardless of gender; I think that sends the right message. I wouldn’t be too surprised if that got vetoed, though.