Is it human or is it dancer?

[j4]

Tomorrow we'll hopefully find out whether the baby is an alien or a predator a boy or a girl. So far I have been told that:

* it'll be a girl because everybody I know has had girls recently
* it'll be a boy because everybody I know has had girls recently
* it'll be a girl because you get more morning sickness with girls
* it'll be a boy because of the position of the bump
* it'll be a girl because of the position of the bump
* it'll be a boy because 'boy' scores more in Scrabble

So that's two answers from people who don't understand probability, three answers which sound to me more like superstition than something which is backed up by any actual research (though I'm happy to be proved wrong), and invisiblechoir being silly. :-)

Two of my colleagues have a bet with each other about which it will be. I don't stand to gain any money from this bet myself, unfortunately. On the other hand, since earlier today one of them couldn't remember which way he'd bet (he'd decided at the time by tossing a coin) I don't think he's taking it that seriously. The other one asked me if I'd tried putting a toad on the bump to predict the baby's sex (I'm not sure quite what one is meant to do with the toad, or wait for the toad to do...?), so I guess he's not wholly serious either. I hope.

I confess I'm keen to know the answer, not least because referring to it as "it" feels awkward. Yes, I may get flamed for Gender Fail, but I'm afraid we're just not progressive enough to try to bring the child up without any awareness of the existence of sex or gender, and let's face it, there's a staggeringly high chance that it will be biologically male or female. Also, I'm going to have at least one more scan after tomorrow's, and I don't want to have to "look away from the screen now" for fear of spoiling the result -- I want to see what's going on! Basically, in most cases I will generally choose the path of More Information.

We also want to start thinking more seriously about names, and it'd be useful to narrow down the choices a bit. Other tactics for narrowing-down include: avoiding names with ambiguous spellings; avoiding extremely long names; avoiding alliteration; and summarily rejecting every single name that appears on this site. So that's a big 'no' to Breckin, Maxigan, Skyler Alexander, Cam'ron, and Kaytaquana. Suddenly, my silly suggestion of naming my child Badger doesn't seem all that ridiculous...

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

nothing from Tolkein

HEAR HEAR. :) My parents had friends who called their daughter Bree after the town in Lord of the Rings. ("No, I'm not named after a cheese, it's spelt differently, I'm named after a fictional town." Poor kid.)

no naming after friends

Mm, I was thinking the same, but OTOH one of my favourite names at the moment is a name that's shared by two friends of ours (not especially close friends so it wouldn't be too weird). I don't think anybody would be likely to be offended, but, hmm.

Dickon is a great name, but always makes me think of the boy who talks to the squirrels and stuff in The Secret Garden.

good associations - for a boy this meant trying to avoid the names of violent killers throughout history, and for a girl it meant a cool chick who did interesting stuff

You weren't worried about avoiding violent female killers then? I mean, Myra is a nice name... so is Lucretia... ;-) Aphra is an excellent name though! And is distinctive without being difficult to spell, which is quite an achievement for names as far as I can tell.

One of my nieces (niece-in-law? Owen's brother's kid, anyway) is called Ada (but pronounced 'Ah-da' [actually sounds like 'ardour', hm, unfortunate] rather than 'Ay-da' -- her mother is German & I think the former is the German pronunciation), so that's already 'taken' in our family -- I am keen to avoid duplicating names that already exist within the most recent two or three generations, just for avoidance of confusion and/or a bit more variety!

I have heard of grown women who are called Bree

[jinty]

n America, I think. R suggests an alternative source for the name might be from C S Lewis (The Horse and His Boy) but I imagine that your parents' friends specifically said they were naming her after a bit of Tolkien?

Dickon Edwards is indeed named after the boy in the Secret Garden so you are right to have him come to mind... Dickon's rather pleased with the association I believe.

"Aphra" has already been misspelled as "Athra" a couple of times, which we were surprised by! Ah well.

Re: I have heard of grown women who are called Bree

[j4.livejournal.com]

Ah, it could be from C S Lewis -- I don't know (second-hand anecdotes eh) whether they said it was Tolkien or whether that was just my mum's inference.

I suspect there isn't a name under the sun that can't be misspelled somehow. :-/ I have certainly had some very weird spellings of my name & I didn't think that was a particularly weird or difficult one!