Baby Food

Do you remember the days when your were expecting your first child, and you went to Barnes and Noble to buy a countless number of baby naming books? Remember how difficult it was? You looked through thousands of names, and narrowed it down to about (5) choices on each side of the potential gender.

Then came the hard part. First, we didn't want to give our kids the same name as our friend's kids. So that knocked a few choices off the list. Next, if you already knew an adult with the same name on your list, and you didn't like them.....well.....those choices were forever doomed. And if you were Jewish, you had the added pressure of selecting a name with the same first initial of someone deceased. How's that for uplifting?

After a few disagreements, you finally settled on a name or two. And it's a lot of pressure. After all, this kid has to live with this moniker for the rest of his/her life. (Marriage can change the surname, but never the first.) Then, you had to worry about whether or not the other kids on the playground would find a way to make fun of your selection. These kids in elementary schools are literary geniuses. They can somehow twist and turn any combination of letters into something incredibly embarrassing and just like that, your kid has to live with it for at least a decade. Personally, I didn't take the brunt of this behavior. The worst I heard was "Adam Madame." I could live with that. It was my last name that fell under attack. "Rowe, Rowe, Rowe your boat...." could be heard near the monkey bars on a regular basis.

Most of us are well past the point of having another child, or perhaps having one at all. But now that I'm older, and just slightly wiser, I realized that our approach to baby naming was off course right from the beginning. We were all looking in the wrong books. We didn't need expensive, and quite heavy baby naming books, especially when we had one in our homes that could have done a more stellar job.

The Zagat book.

Think about it. Many restauranteurs also need to select a name that will be synonymous with strength, quality, and popularity. They derive from a wide variety of nationalities and have already found a positive place in our vernacular. A quick skim through the Zagat's first few pages of top restaurants by cuisine or the best restaurants by neighborhood will easily provide more than enough male and female choices to make you the envy of young parents everywhere.

I could provide endless choices, but I'm only going to highlight a few standouts for a variety of different ethnicities:

FEMALE

Avra - Greek, and somewhat angelic
Oceana - great for nature lovers
Remi - very pretty, and simple
JoJo - playful, and already sounds like a nickname
Aureole - almost has a Disney feel to it
Novita - rolls off the tongue
Pastis- anything French sounds good
Barbetta - very Hollywood

MALE

Nobu - c'mon, who doesn't like Nobu?
Veritas - strong and powerful
Bouley- a name that will get all the girls
Babbo - a little Flintstones, but original
Balthazar - already sounds like a novelist
Pylos - like a Greek God
Tabla - it doesn't rhyme with anything

Now you might ask why on earth would I want to name my kids after anything that reminds me of food, particularly places where I've eaten? But why not? When scores of people look upon these names it can only remind them of the most positive times. Great business lunches, birthdays, anniversaries, retirement parties, holiday parties, and other causes of celebration. How many other names have that kind of equity naturally built in?

I just don't get the same feeling from Ashley, Tiffany, Christopher, and Noah. Most likely, neither will you.