We're having a baby real soon now. These days we're calling the kid "Z" - since we don't know the gender, instead of saying "he or she" or "it" we started saying "ze" as a sort of unisex singular pronoun, and this evolved into saying "Z" as an actual name. We don't think this will really do as a name - never mind the inevitability of always being either last or first when sorted alphabetically, it only has one letter, and that's no good for learning handwriting.

We also used to throw out "Nebucadnezzar" and "Zebediah Fantabuloso" as default names when people asked us if we had a favorite name back in week 3 of pregnancy....

Anyway, here are a bunch of names we're considering giving to this child. Some of these names just amuse us, others we seriously like. The kid may end up with a name not on this list - we don't think we'll have decided before heading home from the hospital - but right now these are names at least one of us is considering at least a little. And we make no promises about keeping this up to date or complete. Don't place bets for large sums of money based on this list...

In no particular order:

Samantha Emma Quinn Maya Sarah Casey Zeta Winifred Abigail Willow Olivia

Zebediah Benjamin Elijah Jacob Jerimiah Samuel Zinn Casey Max (-well? -imus?)

Other names that've come up as potentially interesting to at least one of us for at least a minute or two. Some of these are really awful names. We know that. Relax.