Baby Names

Naming this baby has been more difficult than with our previous two kiddos. Those of you who have read this blog since I was pregnant with Joaquin may have noticed the contrast - we immediately began to call each of our first two kids by their names on this blog as soon as we found out their gender. This time, he is consistently just "baby boy." I guess it's hard to come up with a second name of the same gender considering that you already came up with one before.

We started being totally sure of a first name - Mateo. But we struggled with a middle name. Then, we arrived on a middle name - Andres - but started to have second thoughts about the first after Jay brought up that there was someone in his family tree named Cayetano (pronounced KI (like Hi) - A (like "uh") - TA (like the sound in the word "tall) - NO (just like "no"). The nickname for Cayetano would be Cay (like the popular name for boys, Kai).

For months we have wavered between the two names. People consistently looked puzzled at the name Cayetano because most people have never heard it before and most people say they love the name Mateo. But for us, we really don't want our kids to have names that are super common. Ideally they will rarely be in a class with another kid with their name. This has certainly been the case so far with Joaquin and Noemi. But we also aren't too into the whole super-unique name trend (I'm looking at you Apple). They have to be real names - we don't just make them up.

And then there's the who initial thing. Mateo would be MAN and Cayetano would be CAN. I don't know about you, but I can just picture some obnoxious frat boy going on about how his initials are MAN and me wanted to roll my eyes right out of my head. Maybe it's the whole Trump thing but, ugh, I just find that who scenario a little barf-worthy. We could always do a different middle name (Javier is our next choice) if we do Mateo, but I really like Andres.

Anyhow, all this to say that we are still on the fence on the name but I am leaning toward Cayetano Andres for this baby (with appropriate accent on Andres that I can't type on this blog). It may end up being a very last minute decision after we meet the baby though!