Obligation Smith

Friday Oct 30 2009 10:51:20

By AboutWee

For as long as I can remember I have been keeping a list of baby names I heard over the years and may wish to use when I decided to go forth and multiply. The list grew and when I met husband it was culled and some alternatives were added – cos apparently it was not just about what I liked. Damn.

And then the double line on the wee stick appeared. The list was brought out for actual consideration. For the next eight months (as Flappy came out at 36 weeks saving me the most uncomfortable four weeks of the pregnancy, except that no week was comfortable for me. That’s a while other story) we added, culled and even Googled to have two options each for a boy or a girl. (All the while though, husband knew the name as he knew what sex the baby was from the 20 week scan. Again another story).

It was quite a relief when the names were decided upon. I felt an enormous sense of comfort knowing that we would not be arguing with each other up until the kids first birthday as to what to call it. And then the probing from the parents, with not-so-subtle suggestions on the names they would like us to use started.

You see, it’s our family tradition to name children after relatives that have passed away. Family tradition, set by the parents of parents of parents of parents to the power of who knows. It is a really lovely tradition and which I don’t wish to dishonour this (and by all means go for it if you want to), but Husband and I thought we wanted to start a new tradition and come up with our own names. How completely inconsiderate of us. Neither Husband or I liked the names on offer and to make it even more challenging, it was a tradition from my side of the family, not his. So we had to ask ourselves, why would we choose a name that not only we didn’t like, but a name that meant absolutely nothing to our child’s father?

On top of all of that, we thought that naming our child a dead-relative name would be a lot of pressure to put on a child. ‘So Bob. Your name is Bob. Bob was your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. No one can recall anything about him, but he must have been ok, cos his name has been passed on. Pardon the pun Bob. We hear he never did anything wrong, illegal, silly or inappropriate. In fact he was a complete Saint. We named you Bob cos we hoped you would be instilled with the same qualities as him. No pressure kid’.

Husband and I made the decision that we would not be using a name out of obligation, rather a name/s we liked. I took longer to come around to the idea but eventually did. There was part of me that was still riddled with guilt to be rejecting years and years of family tradition. Would I just succumb to make the family happy so as to not disappoint anyone? Was that what my parents and parents parents and parents parents parents etc did because they carried the same guilt? Did they name their kids Bob just to avoid family conflict? Does anyone even know who the hell Bob was?!

And then I had the most wonderful thought. Why don’t we just name our kid ‘Obligation’? We would be avoiding the dead-people names on offer to us, we would still be acknowledging them and everyone would know our child was named after someone that meant something to someone in our family, sometime. So the idea of Obligation Smith came into careful consideration. I just didn’t want to carry the guilt or be made to feel bad for not choosing dead-person-name-I-didn’t-like-or-person-I-did-not-know.

I imagined the new-born baby on my belly after the birth and the midwife asking me what his/her name was & I would smile, look into the baby’s eyes and say, ‘His/her name is Obligation. Obligation Smith’ and would continue gazing lovingly at this baby knowing this poor kid had more explaining to do about his/her name now than if we just name it Bob.