What's in a Name?

I told my students today that I'm pregnant. It was highly entertaining. To break the news, I gave them a "pop quiz" which consisted of two questions:

1) What is the name of the play we're reading right now? (A: The Diary of Anne Frank)

2) What should Mrs. Harr name her baby boy (due in May)?

I loved watching them read the questions and slowly comprehend what the second question meant. Although, perhaps my favorite part was chuckling at the kids who didn't even get to question two due to the fact that they were stressing about the first question because they couldn't remember the name of the play (really???).

Their name suggestions were pretty great, too. Here's the short list:

Givlio

Chewbacca

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Francisco

Lleyton

Amala Kia

Spuncer

Smikey

Maximus

Mikelsousky

Hayzen

Scrumdeliumpsious

Perceus

Jimbob

And those are just the ones that made me laugh out loud. It's not counting all the boys who want the baby named after them or the weird spellings, like Dakhoda.

In any case, I think I'll have to look elsewhere for inspiration. Or...maybe I should take their advice.

Jimbob Chewbacca Harr

What do you think?

Poll

Tomorrow is a big day for me. I solve a grammatical problem I've had for the last four months. You see, in the English Language, there is no gender-neutral, third-person singular pronoun for a person. I love our language, but this really bothers me, especially lately because I hate calling the baby "it".

But tomorrow we find out if it's a boy or a girl! I don't have a preference; I'll just be glad to know whether to call this child a "he" or a "she" from now on.

Any guesses? Here's a picture to help.

(Sorry, I know my shirt is blocking your view of the baby. It's the best I could do.)