The naming commences

Thanks to a truly overwhelming number of people for the good wishes in response to our Planned pregnancy! I'm really touched.

In case you're wondering, according to the week-by-week updates I get from BabyCenter.com, the baby is now the size of an avocado. It no longer has webbed feet or a tail (note that this describes only the average baby, so we can still hope for those features on ours), and the eyeballs have moved from the side of the head to the properly predatory front.

Many of the comments have already suggested this turn to the conversation: let's have the (non-binding, I hasten to say)

Name Our Baby PlanPoll!

Opening notes:

Literature: [someone] has already moved in the literary direction ("Lord Byron Simpson got beat up in school again today"); [someone] thinks of minstrel names (Thomas the Rhymer, perhaps?); [someone] also suggests Freddy Malins and [someone] Gabe or Gabby in honor of our Joycean expectation.

Hardy Boys: [someone] likes Biff, boy or girl; [someone] cleverly reduces the my two possibilities to Olive-Skinned Ton$; [someone] offers brilliant comments on the implications of the Hardy names for the child's life--[someone], when I approached the end of each chapter, I had to physically cover the last few sentences to keep myself from skipping to the cliff-hanging excitement. And I have long shared your sense that the title of #4 is the best of all.

Other: [someone] offers Interrobang (or, I add, the interrobang symbol itself?); [someone] muses on the possibilities of Carolik and Erikolyn.

We have also considered "[backspace], Jr." as a middle name, so the child would be listed as, say,

Simpson, Interrobang, Jr.

And then could have a child named

Simpson, Interrobang, Jr., Jr.

Who could have a child named

Simpson, Interrobang, Jr., III.

Sweet.