What's in a name?

Before our first child was even born, we had his name picked out.  Gideon James.  We both liked the name Gideon and James is the name of both of our dad’s and Greg’s middle name.  So, it just worked all the way around.  I thought all of our children’s names would be easy to pick out.  Clearly, I was wrong.  My husband is a wonderful man, but we have completely opposite tastes in names.  Here’s a little how the naming process works in our house:

Me: How about Channing?
Greg: Channing…Channing…that sounds like a vegetable.
Me: No it doesn’t. 
Greg: Yes it does.  We’re not naming our child that.
Me: Okay….how about…
Greg: No.
Me: I didn’t say anything.
Greg: I know; I just know I’m not going to like it.

Okay, that’s maybe not 100% verbatim, but seriously, every name I come up with, he has some ludicrous reason why we can’t use it.  And every name he likes I dislike.  We plan on having more children, but I think we’re just going to start calling them “Baby Morford #4” and so on after this because that’s just much easier.

 Then we got goats.  Oh, we must be gluttons for punishment around here.  We have registered animals, which means they must have names.  And they need to be creative names, because really, when you get a certificate of registration from the American Dairy Goat Association, do you really want it to say “Blackie” or “Billy” or “Spot”?  No.  Are famous racehorses named “Sam” or “Ed” or “Trigger”?  No, they have flashy and cool names like “Man of War” and “Sea Biscuit.”  So, last year when we had 4 goat kids, the naming battle began again.  In the end, we came up with Prima, Pixie, Blizzard, and Brutus.  It’s a very stressful process trying to find names that are distinguished, unique, and pronounce-able.  But the fun doesn’t stop there, because we sell soaps.

Ahh, the soaps.  Yes.  That’s fun.  We feel like the names of our soap are very important because you want people to be able to understand what the soap smells like even if they purchase online and can’t actually smell the soap, and we want it to be semi-creative so we don’t sound like complete idiots.  When we purchase fragrance oils, our supplier already has given them a name.  Some of them are pretty self-explanatory and we can’t really change them.  I mean, what else are you going to call “Black Raspberry”?  Some soaps don’t have a singular smell, and it’s hard to give them a name, but we don’t like the supplier’s name.  Our man’s soap was originally called “Pheonix”.  But we didn’t really like that.  We were going to call it “Blue Ice” or something similar, but when we used our natural colorant in that soap, it turned green instead of blue.  You can’t call a green soap “Blue Ice”.  So we went with Amazon, as in the rain forest. 

Right now, we are in the middle of a soap-naming conundrum.  We have a new soap that smells amazing.  I mean, it is fabulous.  But sometimes when you smell it, it smells like vanilla.  Sometimes, it smells like cotton candy.  Other times your nose picks up fruit, flowers, or something else that’s sweet but you just can’t name.  Also, the vanilla in the fragrance turns the soap dark, dark brown.  All things to consider when choosing a name.  Names we’ve considered are “Sugar Blossom”, “Vanilla Blossom”, and “Spun Sugar”.  None of these we feel like completely describe all the aspects of its scent.  I suggested “Everything Nice” just so we don’t leave anything out.  You know, like “Sugar and spice and everything nice…”  No?  Yes, my husband gave me a blank stare too.  I would love to put a scratch and sniff sticker right here so you can smell it and suggest names.  I’d throw a contest and whoever picked the name could win a prize.  But unfortunately that’s not possible.  So we’re back to arguing politely discussing soap names in hopes that eventually we’ll find one we like so that eventually we can sell you this wonderful bar of soap, because frankly, we think you all will love it. 

But as the saying goes, “A rose by any other name, would smell as sweet.”  In that case, maybe we’ll just go with Soap #5!