A Problem Facing Fathers: What Will You Name Your Child?

Among the greatest of afflictions is the problem of picking names...

A young man marries and moves with his bride into a little cottage on the shoulder of a hill, where the birds of love, peace, and tranquility warble in the air. After two months or three or four — sometimes five or six, and perhaps seven — his bride, with much blushing of cheeks and much coyness, informs him that he will become a father after a certain number of months have passed. First of all he "gapes" at her, not believing his ears; then the truth floods him with its light, and he knows that he — that one and only individual — is to become a father of children. So he opens his arms and clasps his bride to his breast, then carries her to the nearest seat or chair, sets her down with all gentleness, and insists that she must not move... And he begins pacing back and forth in front of her, looking at her one moment and the next emitting strange sounds from his throat, like "yeh," "wow," "fweet"; then he looks at her and laughs like an idiot, and goes back to strutting before her, trying to wrap his arms around his neck, until he tires — whereupon he "flops" his legs down on the carpet before his bride and lets his "foolishness" loose upon her. That is Act One. Many acts follow it, especially if the bride is one of those who get "the cravings," or who hanker after strange and wondrous things.

No doubt many acts follow after the bride tells her husband that she has "tucked something away." But everything is easy when compared with the great problem the father faces when his wife is in her sixth or seventh month, and he suddenly remembers that he must choose two names — one masculine and one feminine, by way of precaution against contingencies. So he lights a cigarette and sits down on the nearest seat, then tries to recall a number of names of both sexes that please him; but he is astonished at the weakness of his memory, for he finds he cannot remember more than five or six names. He squeezes his brain and devours his cigarette whole, but after a while finds his pouch still empty; so he stubs out the cigarette violently and consoles himself that he has plenty of time to find a name or two...

And the days pass while he postpones and postpones, until one night he sees himself running in his nightshirt after a "taxi" so as to get home and carry his bride off to the maternity hospital — and he is forced to give his newborn an easy name, the kind usually picked by a man who does not want to tire his brain: like the name Layla if it is a girl, and Fouad if it is a boy...

Aha! Now I have come to the heart of the matter. Yours truly has been married a short while, and my bride has "tucked something away." I say this with complete assurance for three reasons: first, because she told me herself; second, because the doctor told me too; and third, because I have spent four months bearing the twin torments of "the cravings" and the smells of pickles and preserves and salad in the bedroom — for the beloved wife keeps beside her bed a dish of every kind of pickle, as a precaution against whatever she might crave of them in the night...

"To make a long story short," I now find myself compelled to hunt for two suitable names, lest time corner me and I find myself taking refuge in "Layla" or "Fouad" or some such names — beautiful, but easy...

The monkey has been whispering to me for some time now, and I consulted my wife on the subject. She set down her knitting, clasped her head in her hands, and went still. I asked her what was the matter, and she said she was trying to search for a beautiful name... So I cursed the hour in which I had landed myself in this predicament, and begged the bride to go back to her knitting and leave the task of finding the name to me; but she shook her head, and her gaze remained stretched off toward China. So I opened a book and read three lines of it four times; then I shut the book, went to the bedroom, looked in the mirror, and straightened my necktie; then I came back to the sitting room where my wife was. She greeted me with a shout: "Nada! Nada!" I told her that the name Nada, when given to a little girl, rings prettily in the ears, but that the fact is a number of my female relatives bear this name, and I would rather find something else. So she went back to her knitting, and I went back to squeezing my brain. Then I took a sheet of paper and drew a line dividing it into two columns, and wrote at the top of the right-hand column "Girl," and on the left "Boy"; and under "Girl" I wrote the following: Huda, Ghania, Ghina, Dalal, Husn, Malak, Widad; and under "Boy": Suhail, Nadim, Farid, Basim, Hashim, Zaki, Zahi. And I slept on the matter, as they say. In the morning I read the list over and did not like it, so I tore it up and resolved to write another in the evening. But it happened that I was kept busy that evening and did not get home until a late hour, so I went to bed the moment I arrived. A week went by, then two, and here is my wife in the last days of her seventh month, and here am I, still writing a list in the evening and tearing it up in the morning, only to go back and write another — and so on.

Truly, the problem of picking names is a thorny problem. But despair has not yet taken hold of me, and I have firm hope that I shall succeed in choosing a name by which my coming child will hold his head high, thanking me always and repeating on every occasion: Thanks to my father, who tired his brain and hunted out a beautiful name for me, and did not lazily name me "Fouad," say, or "Layla"...