Okay, this is fun. Everyone is calling me to ask if I’d had Jack yet. I impress them with my knowledge that only 3 percent of babies are actually born on their due dates.
Jack is what we’ve been calling our baby since about the second month. We tried so many names to fit with the last name Brennan. I’d always dreamed of an arty, hippy name like Rain if it was a boy, or Summer if it was a girl. But if you could see my husband and me you’d see that a typical white Anglo name probably works best. And if Jack has any “cool” factor whatsoever, he probably will get it from friends. We could be best defined as geeks, which are in right now, so I suppose that makes him cool by default.
When we found out it was definitely a boy, and it is DEFINITELY a boy, we had to forget about Summer and focus on boys’ names. Being the lit major, I sought writer and character names for inspiration. I came up with Auden. Auden Brennan. How highbrow. Add a Lee in the middle to give it a Southern flare. Auden Lee Brennan. This lasted a while until my best friend said it sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to pronounce Arden. She would mock Arnold, saying, “Auden, Auden Brennan. Please come to the main office.”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” I said. And on we went to Irish names. We’d been to Ireland only months before and deemed it a dream world. In fact, Clare would have been Summer’s middle name, as in County Clare. But for a boy, we liked Collin or Connor. Connor Brennan. That works. So does Collin Brennan. People agreed it was a very nice name.
A very nice name wasn’t quite what we wanted. Names need a reason, and Collin and Connor didn’t have a reason. We started thinking of family names. Howard- no, Elliot-there was already a family baby with that name. Robert- yes, my Dad and my husband’s best friend. John- well, that’s my husband’s first name, his Dad’s first name, and our nephew’s middle name. Is there a variant? Jack. Jackson. Oooh, it is reminiscent of the South, my heritage. Jackson Square, Stonewall Jackson- oopse, I mean Andrew Jackson. Jackson Robert Brennan. That’s nice. Jack Brennan. Friends agreed it was a strong, weighty name with an IT factor. A lot to live up to.
In the shoe store, the sales girl was asking what his name would be. Jack Brennan I told her.
“I like it. Sounds like a guy that would clean my chimney,” she said.
“I hope he turns out to be more than a chimney sweep,” I replied.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I mean it’s the kind of guy that always wears jeans.”
I stopped her from putting her Sketchers Shape-ups even deeper into her mouth, although it gave me something to think about. But at this point, Jack had stuck. And boy was he stuck.
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