Naming The Baby - Part 1

As is happening at an increasing rate, the people of Google+ are meeting each other and ... um ... well ... we've started following nature's course.  Crystal and I personally know of 3 brand new babies in the last 6 weeks as well as a number of other expecting plussers besides us.  So ... how exactly do you name a "Baby Of The Plus"?  Crystal and I feel we've stumbled upon a fantastic way to do it.

Our story begins about a month ago with the two of us discussing names, as any set of expecting parents would.  In a matter of about 10 minutes we were able to come to a 100% agreement on what name we'd use if the baby is a girl (to be discussed in part 2).  In about as little time, we were able to choose a middle name for if the baby is a boy - James - after her father and my grandfather (and great grandfather and uncle).

When considering names for my children ... I totally admit to looking for references to people or characters that I like ... bonus points for geek cred.  I suggested we could name the baby Lucas.  She quickly realized that though a nod to George Lucas, it would also allow me to say to the baby lines like "Luke, I am your father" and "use the force Luke" ... and while she found it funny she wasn't 100% convinced.

In what felt like no time at all, Crystal suggests we should name the baby Rick so that he'd be "Rick James" ... seriously!  She said she'd teach the baby to go around saying "I'm Rick James, bitch!"

Hilarity ensues.

We're not ones to keep the laughs to ourselves, so we decide we're going to share this with our friends on Google+.  We'd both each already created a "Baby Circle" which combined total around 200 people that we share more private baby related posts with (versus sharing to hundreds if not thousands of potential viewers by posting to our full circles or public).  We asked them "which name do you prefer?" and as predicted ... voting and hilarity ensued!

Our discussion continued ...

Two days later, Crystal is pushing to name the baby Rory, ala Rory Williams from Doctor Who, while I'm countering her with the name Malcolm, ala Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly.  We again decide to turn to our people on Google+ to try to one-up each other in this debate.  It was here that we realized a few things ...

1. People love feeling involved in the process of naming the baby.
2. The debate that ensues can be hilarious!

At this point, Crystal and I decided we'd come up with a list of 16 names that we both like and create a voting bracket - March Madness style (which by the way is appropriate in a way considering the baby is due March 8th).  We decide on our favorite names ... create the initial pairings ... and throw it into a Google Form (to tally the votes) and put the Sweet Sixteen round out for our Baby Circles to vote on - posting successive rounds every two days or so until all but one name is eliminated.

Instead of detailing the entire process in a lot of words ... I've created the following bracket to allow you to quickly see how the voting broke down.  You can click on each match for more information.

Throughout the week long process we had many people comment on how much fun the process had been or how they've been following the voting in real-time as we had been waiting to see how things would turn out.  There was a tie-breaker round ... some voting shenanigans ... and in the end things narrowed the list of boy names down to one final name ... one name to rule them all ...

Ian James Partridge ... named for Sir Ian McKellen.  Honestly ... we love the name.  The process really helped us to fall in love with the name.  Along the way, a number of people asked if we were going to do a girl name bracket ... seeing as everyone had so much fun with the boy names.  We decided why not?!  Though with the girl name bracket we did announce that we have a name chosen ... but I'll save this all for Part 2 next week!