Choosing names for our children is presenting a real challenge. When we were expecting Monty we googled a lot… Mainly we searched for lists of most popular names. I was the only Luke at my schools between the age of 5 and 13 and I was keen to have names which were out of the ordinary and “bold”. I thought this might encourage our first-born to develop bravely. So we went for Monty. It’s not an abbreviation. It’s just Monty. And we gave him a second name, Joe. We did that because I was fed up with not having a middle name. Most of my friends did and I always thought there was something special about having a second name. My parents had both grown up during the war so when I was born in the 1960’s rationing was clearly still in their mind. Therefore I was to receive one name and one name only other than my family name and this was to be used sparingly.

So Charlotte and I decided to give our children more than one first name. I wanted to go for three but she wasn’t so keen. So we agreed on two. And it was fine with Monty. But now we have to find four boys’ names and four girls’ names. Charlotte doesn’t want to know the gender of our twins in advance. I would prefer to know but don’t want to know if Charlotte isn’t going to know. I’d only let something slip and feel terrible. So we’ve agreed we’re not going to find out until the twins are born.

We were slow to research names and even slower to agree on any. All of the ones we quite liked were in the top 10. So we were forced to be amore creative. We thought of Greek, Roman and Norse deities. But we couldn’t see ourselves really telling Zeus for the third time to brush his teeth or reminding Thor to wipe his feet before coming indoors.

Luckily Monty’s pregnancy went two weeks into extra time so by the time he arrived we had chosen his name already.

So now we’re going through the same process all over again. We have a few months to go but we can’t even agree one name let alone four!

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