Perhaps the most pressure we have endured throughout this entire pregnancy is the NAME GAME. And for the record, we actually have decided on a name – the last name…

Everyone wants to know his name. Everyone has ideas, opinions, judgements. But few people have inquired about the last name of our future son. Ya know, the fact he comes from parents who are married but do not share a last name. Alix wrote about that here, and it’s something that we both mutually love and respect.

For the last 8 years together we never thought we’d be having a child so the discussion of whose name they would take was never an issue. The moment Alix and I began discussing the possibility last summer of an addition, we realized that this conversation was one of the most important.

Though Alix loves to challenge tradition and I am as progressive as she, having last names after being married was less about a progressive viewpoint and more about creating meaning. As she penned in her post, the identity she created when she made her middle name legally her last name was a sign of strength and resilience, a reminder that at the heart of every name she had, she could cling to one and make it her own. In honoring her late grandfather, H. Gilman Williams, she has created a new meaning in their shared middle name.

We want that same message given to our son: his last name will be Gilman.

For us, giving our son the last name Gilman has less to do about taking one of our names and more to do with what it means to us. This was a mutual decision, one that I admire and support and respect. I want our son to know that strong women make strong men, and that my influence in his life will not be boiled down to a shared name. It gives me the chance to show him so much more about how to embrace change and challenge the status quo and make meaning wherever he has the opportunity. That is what we want to inspire in our son.

There you have it. Baby G, Little G, or just “G” has a last name. The first and middle are still in the works and are definitely unique. I can promise you won’t be meeting “Apple” Gilman or even Baby Moon Unit, but we are taking a short list of names to the hospital and hoping that when we finally get to meet our boy, we will know exactly what that name is meant to be. Cheers to only three more weeks until our little guy’s arrival!

-Scott