Picking a child’s name is probably more art than science nowadays, thanks to demographic reasons. But when you get the siblings and other kids involved, the results can be quite funny.

In the old days, it was easy to keep family names. That’s because in the days of the agrarian society, you had plenty of kids to keep those names going. Anyone who has read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude will know what I’m talking about…there are too many family members named Jose, Arcadio and Jose Arcadio to count!

When we picked our daughter’s and son’s names, we were faced with the same dilemma many young couples have. There are just too many relatives, and not enough kids to fill the names. And somebody’s family name is going to be left out. When my mom asked why we didn’t pick a family name for our son, I replied “Because Zachary Tures Tures sounds ridiculous.”

So we compromised, and chose names that had never been in our family tree, on either side. Both sets of parents balked, calling those names “temporary,” and “working titles.” That only cinched those names for us! Keep this in mind, grandparents of Troup County and nearby areas.

The other day, my daughter Valerie and I thought we’d help our neighbors with their name choice of the fourth boy in the family, expected later this year. “What should we call the new baby?” I asked Matthew Lamb, the eldest boy, as we planted a Sierra Club Cherry Bark tree.

“We can’t do that,” the five year-old replied. “We won’t know his name until he comes out!”

While I cackled with laughter, envisioning an infant with the name written across his forehead at birth, my own five year-old girl suggested “We could name him Matthew.”

“No we can’t…he’ll already have a brother named Matthew,” I pointed out. “We’d have to call him ‘Matthew 2.’”

While they pondered this, I offered “Maybe we could think of a name from the bible. After all, Matthew is in the bible. And his brother Nathan is….”

“We could call him God!” Matthew blurted out with joy.

“No, then we’d have to call him ‘God 2,’” Valerie responded. Then she came over to my hunched, quivering form, and said “Daddy, why are you laughing so hard?”

“I meant….the name of a person…in the bible,” I managed.

“Like…‘Bob?” she replied with all seriousness. At this point, I couldn’t get past guffawing. I didn’t even bother remembering my Catholic school lessons as to whether there was even a Saint Robert, much less a “Prophet Bob.”

So maybe the family name is the way to go, though I’m not sure Jose Arcadio Lamb has a good ring to it.