What's in a name?

Amy: "[ai - mi]"

Thing is, you have to call babies something or other. Normal nouns are not generally accepted unless you're a washed up popstar and want to call your baby 'Pepper' or Sunbeam'. After fruitless discussions about the merits of "Emma" (too effing Jane Austen and Notting Hill), "Rachel" (too Friends) and Penelope (pretentious and in French sounds like 'salope' - whatever that means: something rude apparently) I began to lose patience with the whole philosophy of naming altogether. 'Cupboard' was one name that appealed to me for a while, but it sounded too domestic after a week or so. So I suggested others. 'Lighthouse', 'Scarf' and then 'Seems', followed by 'Gobshite' and finally 'Youthere'.

In desperation, I decided to pick letters at random from the keyboard. Since we're in France and everything is done in threes, there was going to be three of us and three's my lucky number, it had to be 3 letters long. The first two "gut" and "sit" were ok but then I decided to pick letters from the start, middle and end of the alphabet to come up with something. But, 'Bum' would reminded her too much of her dad, "Alz" too abstract, 'CtrlAltDel' good from a bureaucratic point of view but a bit too formal, then 'Amz' - as in 'Amza getting dressed' or 'Amza trying to get some fuggin sleep here' and finally after months of deliberation, totally unintersting to anyone but six other people or so we chose 'Amy'.

Either that or we called her after Amy Winehouse or that character from 'Futurama' or some personage in 'Little Women'. In fact - don't ask me why we called her what we did, all names are made up anyway. "The name's 'Brown' - "Amy Brown'".