Okay, boy name.

I've been battling for quite a while with finding the perfect baby names.  I chose the perfect girl name (still a secret, just in case), and then I found out the baby is most likely a boy.  So I started focusing on boy names.  Tonight I thought of a boy name I loved (I was actually half asleep when it popped into my head) : Cohen.  (Rhymes with Owen) Hubby and I excitedly discussed the name, decided that it was absolutely perfect, and started picturing Christmas gifts with the words "To: Cohen  Love: Santa" scribbled on the shiny labels.  Yeah, we went there.  We got THAT excited about this name.

I have absolutely loved the name Owen for a really long time.  It was my top boy name for  a few years and I was completely set on using it if I ever had a second son.  When I became pregnant this time and the possibility of using it became real, I stopped loving it so much.  I suddenly hated that it started with an "O" and it felt incomplete.  When I first thought of the name Cohen, it felt like a more perfect version of Owen, and I thought it was sent to me as a sign.

Then I researched Cohen, and I couldn't have been more wrong about it being a "sign".  I might as well name my kid Osama bin Laden or Adolph Hitler, because Cohen is about as controversial as any other name I've ever heard of.  It means "Jewish priest".  It's a religious title, not just a word with that meaning, and it's also a very common last name among Jewish people.  I don't personally have a problem with the meanings and I respect people of all religions.  But there are tons and tons of people who get seriously offended by non-Jewish people giving their child this name.  I can't find a single baby name site about the name Cohen that isn't warning me not to use it.  In fact, I bet if I research the names Osama or Adolph, there are probably fewer warnings on those sites.

I tried really hard to keep loving the name.  I tried to fall in love with the alternate spellings which mean other things (Cowen, Cowan, Coen, Koen).   I examined all the spellings, asked for opinions online, did lots of research, and talked to my hubby about it.  I was working so hard to convince myself that the name was still usable, that I wore myself out.  After all that research and a few hours of sleep I realized I didn't want to work that hard my whole life to keep reassuring myself that I picked a good name.  I don't want to offend anyone, I don't want to use a weird spelling that I hate, and I DEFINITELY don't want to defend my child's name to every person I meet.  I'd be embarrassed and paranoid every time I told someone the name and I'd probably end up defending it frequently even when no one said anything bad about it.  So obviously Cohen is not going to work.  Certain circumstances render a name absolutely unusable, and I think this is one of them.  I simply cannot handle the burden of giving my child this name.

Here's the final thing.  At one point during the whole Cohen fiasco, a thought crossed my mind.  Why the heck am I working this hard to convince myself that Cohen is a usable name when Owen is almost exactly the same?  There is not a single thing wrong with the name Owen.  Owen sounds almost exactly the same as Cohen.  It's spelled and pronounced correctly 99.9% of the time, lots of people like the name Owen, it's not weird or unusual, it's not overly popular, and no one discriminates against people named Owen because of their name. The name Cohen has taught me to appreciate the name Owen again, and maybe Owen is "the one".  I can now actually imagine naming my son Owen and telling people his name.  This is not set in stone or anything, but we're probably going name him Owen.  I don't plan on making any official decisions until my next ultrasound when we have better evidence that the baby is definitely a boy.