Children's names...

Last weekend we were racking our brains trying to come up with some good names, and now we understand why people say that it's sometimes hard to figure out. You can go to websites that list the most popular names by year, but nothing jumps at you. You can think about naming someone after somebody famous like an actor (Clint, Audrey), someone from a band (Geddy, Ringo), an athlete (Brady), or maybe even make a statement with a political figure (Nelson, Koffi, Stalin).

But really, would you want to do that to somebody? That's a name they will carry for the rest of their lives. As much fun as that seems, in the long run that's not worth it. So we decided to take the short route that most people do and honor somebody close to us - a good friend or relative...

So for guys our short list ended up as Gottfried (Fred), Charles (Charlie), Wilford (Willy), and Matthew (Matt).

That's all we needed, as it was only men that we had the honor of naming. Siew Yih has some new staff, four new guys that didn't already have western names, and for reasons we can't explain she asked us for help.

This should be easy for us to name them, let's just match their personalities -
Willy - the guy who likes to drink
Matt - the storyteller
Charlie - the jokester
and Fred - the one most likely to steal a plane

All good, except that Willy was rejected because it is hard to say with a Chinese accent, so we then moved on the Edward, Gabriele (Gabe), and Alex. When we last left Temptations the we deep into discussions as to what names they wanted. What fun.

As if we don't go there enough, now it will be like seeing family....