Literary pretensions

Since getting pregnant, I've participated in what I call "baby boards". Online discussion forums about babies and pregnancy and so forth.

There is some good information there (I think), but what I really like are the name polls. People put up three or four (usually dismal) choices - and you're supposed to help them name their child.

I always vote (almost always) - I had to pass on one when I saw that the choices included Aayden. I guess that guarantees that your kid will always be at the top of the list (well, just behind Aaron or Aardvark). I vote for the traditional and the properly spelled.

This morning I saw that one woman was in dispute with her "dh" (husband) over what to name their son. She preferred Atticus, he didn't. She wanted her child to have a literary name and wanted help thinking of a good character name.

I found that I couldn't think of a single one. I could think of scads of female character names - but the only male ones that popped into my head was Christian Leden (a Norwegian explorer who was actually a real person and wrote a now out-of-print memoir that I love) and Holden Caulfield. And would you really want to name your kid after a Holden - that snotty, spoiled brat? Misunderstood-schmishunderstood. And then I thought of Joe Christmas - but that's another name I wouldn't recommend. And I thought of Gatsby - errr, no good. I couldn't think of a single admirable male character whose name I could actually remember. I feel this brain blank is largely the fault of my poor memory for names and perhaps an overly gender-centric world view.

And then - the snobby part of me - is thinking about that woman and her query. Why is she so hot on a literary name when she can only think of one character? And Atticus isn't a bad name - but aren't you guaranteed a good smacking on the playground with that one? And anyway, how literary can you be if the only name you can think of comes out of To Kill a Mockingbird - on every single high school reading list and a popular movie to boot. (I'm trying not to be too snobby - since I could only think of cliched names myself - if at all).

I do know that some of my regular readers are better readers than I am - maybe they can think of a name of a male character with upstanding moral values who doesn't come to some suitably gothic sticky end.

I don't have this trouble deciding on names, since I'm using family names that I chose a long time ago. But baby Cletus's first and middle names do happen to also both be the names of well-known Southern authors - and one of them is even male.