A baby by any other name...

As a writer names have always been something I have had difficulty with. I can never start writing until I name my characters, but it inevitably takes me forever to decide on the perfect name, so it comes as no real surprise that I am having such a hard time with this whole baby-naming business. Having grown up with a difficult name myself, the importance of naming my baby with the perfect name is naturally something of an obsession. For those of you who don't know me, my full name is Shahrzad. As an adult I have come to enjoy the uniqueness of my name and of course as a writer I appreciate the meaning behind it (i.e. the storyteller from the Arabian Nights), but as a kid growing up it was a whole different ball of wax. I couldn't understand for the life of me why my parents would want to stick me with such an obviously awkward, difficult-to-pronounce name. I even went through a phase where I thought I might try going by my middle name, Maria, but that never really became a reality outside of my own hopeful imaginings. 

Now that it comes down to naming my own child and I have the wisdom of my own experience, I want to find a name that is both unique and simple, something easy to spell and pronounce, but different enough that it doesn't automatically have to be coupled with the first initial of her last name so as to recognize the difference between her and the four other girls in her class with the same name. On top of all this it just has to sound right, roll off the tongue well, fit with our last name and feel natural. In other words it has to be perfect. And so far nothing fits the bill. We have a short list --not all agreed upon between my husband and myself-- but a list nonetheless of names we really like, and yet I still don't feel like I've found that perfect one. Maybe I'm making too much of this, maybe a name is just a name. All I know is the baby isn't even born yet and parenting is already difficult.