Bright Blue Neon Lights with a Purple Outline

Tonight I had a hypothetical baby-naming conversation with my wife, one of those chats that are the marriage spitballing equivalent of trying to create an empire team building. She asked me what I would name our child if he were a boy, and I drew a blank. I've thought of some boy names over the years, but I couldn't recall any*.

I have a bunch of girl names in my memory Rolodex, though. Leon found this weird because she is absolutely sure that, when we eventually have a child, he'll be a boy. She should play roulette in Vegas.

Anyway, my girl names:

- Imogen. Leon hates that name; I love it. "Genie" is a good diminutive form, too.

- Siobhan. It's a great name, and fun to say if you know the pronunciation, but the only diminutive that comes naturally to me is "Vonny." Actually, that's not too bad.

- Sadie. My maternal grandmother's name. It just sounds pretty to me. Plus, it already sounds like a diminutive, which means "Sades" can work as a shortened name. I'm big on "Sades." I might even pronounce it 'shar-days' on occasion. Only 80's kids get this.

- Relm. This is only because I recently finished Final Fantasy VI; there is no way in Hell that my wife would ever agree to that name. I like how it rolls off the tongue, but for a non-native English speaker it's a sonuvabitch to say. It'd be like naming a German kid "Squirrel."

- Danielle. This is currently my top pick. The diminutive, "Dani," sounds great -- if I'm going to have to say a name over and over again, it has to have mileage -- and it would mean that I will have named my second child after another character from the original New Mutants. And I'm all for continuity.


* "Blastmaster" might have been one. "Yogurt" might have been another, possibly because I was eating yogurt at the time.