Babies: What’s in a name?

My husband and I joked that if I we had a child out here in Argentina we’d have to name it Maradona or Evita, boy or girl respectively. Apparently there’s an official list of approved names allowed by the Civil Registry of Buenos Aires. Some of my friends think that the locals are having us on. However, an official name does, or at least did, indeed exist from which one had to choose a name for their new bundle of joy, even foreigners.

So now that I’m finally pregnant, and given that the child will be born on Argentine soil, we decided to consult this name book. An official name list is not actually as strange as it sounds. Many countries –including Germany, Iceland, China and Japan – regulate names for various reasons, from saving the child from possible embarrassment to preventing gender confusion.

In Argentina, names started being registered in the 1880s and this practice was turned into a formality by Juan Peron in 1952. Oh well, either way we were pleasantly surprised that the list we consulted online was pretty expansive. It not only included some English names, but also ones that sounded a bit more exotic. As I’m Indian and my husband is English, our fears that we'd struggle to find a name that reflected both cultures were put to bed.

After all our endeavours, many Argentine friends have since bunked the idea of having to adhere to the official list. You can choose any name you want, they reckon. No one really knows, it seems. However, an article in La Nacion last year said that the provincial Registry of Buenos Aires had approved new names and removed others to respect people’s dignity. Hola Coco, but chau Fox. Yet with 4 million names to choose from, even if we have to follow the list, there has to be something that will take our fancy.

The new civil code says that names no longer have to denote the gender of the sex, they don’t have to be translated into Spanish and can take either the mother of father’s surname. I was happy to adopt my husband’s surname so it looks like the baby will have to follow suit.

Name, name, name…

So official name list aside, what I have found really astonishing is that Argentines expect you to tell them the name of the unborn baby. To me it seems that they treat a fetus in the same way that we, in the UK, would treat a child post-birth. It is simply expected that the parents-to-be will find out the sex of the baby. They will not just think of a name, but announce it on Facebook with an image of the scan.  

Of course, it is a different culture and in many ways it's lovely that they feel comfortable about having this sort of a relationship with their unborn child. I just feel like it’s tempting fate. I guess I view the relationship with my child with cautious excitement. Call it British reservation, stiff upper lip etc, but my nine months aren’t over yet.

Finally, yes we have thought of names but after five scans, the doctor still cannot confirm the sex of the baby with 100% certainty. IMaybe I should just say Coco or Fox … Oh but the second one is banned.