Behind The Jack

There's a lot that goes into a name. We spend nine months choosing a name for our kids, and then end up calling them something else altogether when they're born anyway. After finally (finally!) settling on Rebecca for our oldest, knowing we'd just call her Becky anyway, we nicknamed her Nelly. And it stuck. For years. Josh was Bubby. (Not Bubba. We're not from Texas.) It's insane the amount of time we put into the choice of a name. And shockingly, choosing a name for a dog is no different. You'd think with all the dogs we've had over the years we'd have this down, but perhaps that's why it's so difficult. All the names we love most have already been taken.

But boys? We have few boy dogs around here, and I have a whole list of fun names for boy dogs. In the running for our baby French bulldog were Henri, Frankie, Charlie, Silas, and Oscar. These were my choices. I asked the kids what they would like, and Luke suggested Jackson. Jack for short, of course. (And we all know that this is his name, so SPOILER ALERT, it was the winner.) Still, Henri, Charlie, Silas, Frankie, and Oscar were fun, too. So we had to narrow things down. We've got narrowing-down-skillz up in here.

Frankie is just too cute for a dog, but Frank isn't so much. And my gram's recently-passed husband was Frank, and I could see my mom being all, "you named a dog after Frank? Why would you do that?" Frankie was out. That left Henri, Charlie, Silas, Oscar, and Jack.

The next cutting factor was the "E" ending. We've got Essie and Mattie in the house, and Becky gets all kinds of frustrated when she's upstairs and all she hears is "garblegarbleE" when I'm calling the dogs back inside. She's never sure I'm calling Beck-E, or Essi-E, and knows if she doesn't answer in the event it's Beck-E she'll be in trouble. She has politely requested that we avoid the "E" ending in future if we can. So Henri and Charlie were out. That left us with Silas, Oscar, and Jack.

The last criteria we considered was whether or not Micah could say the name. With apraxia, he says the ending sounds of words and not the beginning sounds. Josh is "osh," Luke is "ook," and Becky is "E," although recently he's upgraded her to "key." His speech is coming along slowly but surely. So thinking of our choice of names, Silas was out. In the event he wouldn't get the L sound in there, we'd have Micah running around calling the dog something we'd rather him not. How fun would that be at school when he's telling his teacher about his dogs? So that left us with Oscar and Jack.

And while most of the family leaned toward Oscar, I chose Jack instead. The reason is twofold. I loved the fact that Luke suggested it all on his own, and I like the kids to be involved in my little hobby of collecting dogs. But really, the biggest reason Jack is so named is because the idea of Micah running around yelling "Ack! Ack!" amuses me. Clearly, it doesn't take much, but it really is cute. I'm justified in my choice of names.