But what will we call it?

When it was discovered that we were spawning a human, we figured we’d better call it something.

Unfortunately, once you have to consider naming your own child, you start thinking almost every name is shit. Occasionally you do come across a name that you like at first glance until you remember knowing some annoying kid back in school, or having worked with some dickhead with that name, and it’s now been tarnished beyond repair.

Or conversely, you’ll like a name, but it’s of someone you’re still friends with, and fear sets in, as it might be interpreted as a dedication sure to bloat their head to Kanye West-like proportions. Or worse, you used to date someone with that name, and it immediately seems creepy. You’ll think you can get past it, but you can’t. The name is dead.

Eventually you will do what everyone in the 21st century does when they fall pregnant – visit baby name websites. This is a complete shit show. On one particular website, the most popular girl name was ‘Khaleesi’. Now I enjoy torrenting Game of Thrones as much as the next person, but I’m not going to name my daughter after the Queen of the Dothraki. There were many other pop culture references, and generally speaking, there was a running theme of strange monikers that will soon be skinning their knees around schools and playgrounds everywhere. I feel sorry for the teachers that will have to deal with this.

“Atticus, stop distracting Silas. Knox, last warning, you’ll be sent to the principal’s office. Now, I want everyone to split off into groups of three. Bilbo, you can work with Katniss and Wolverine. And Aurora I’m happy for you to work with Khaleesi L and Khaleesi P.”

I can see it now. The parents that name their kid ‘Steve’ or ‘Sarah’ will be looked upon like weirdos by all those not committing their child to schoolyard name purgatory. Their little Phoenix won’t have to worry about that.

Some people like to name their child in relation to the conception. That’s why we have names like ‘Paris’ and ‘Brooklyn’. It must not be an Australian trend though, because I’ve never met a ‘Torana’. If we were to personally use the conception as inspiration, then the kid would probably be called ‘Tequila’.

Eventually we did decide on a boy’s name. My wife, Trish, was certain it was a boy, so for some time we were settled. Of course, an eventual ultrasound decided to fuck that idea up, and we found out we were having a girl. So it was back to the proverbial drawing board.

Eventually, after hating just about every girl name in the world, we settled on ‘Frankie’. It wasn’t too girly, and sounded pretty cool, a bit like a 20’s New York mobster. No one would ever dare mess with Frankie.

And there were plenty of cool nicknames. Franks and beans. Frankfurter. Frank the tank. Thomas the Frank engine. Frankenstein. And that’s how we got to the name of the blog.

The kid is already tormented and it hasn’t even been born yet.