I AM JUST INVENTING NAMES

Some time during the late 1990s/early 2000s, I started developing an idea for a novel. It was a vampires versus werewolves story from the point of view the human caught in between the "fang wars". The title I had in mind was Bloodlust and it was supposed to begin in the Dark Ages with two vampire families in a Romeo and Juliet type of conflict that gave birth to the vampire leader of the modern times, Dæniel Drake (yes, I wanted it spelled like that). I did a lot of research and even made character sketches. I think I was able to get as far as two pages of the prologue until I learned about a film starring Kate Beckinsale entitled Underworld. Oh well.

Anyway, the reason I opened with that is because I have a slight dread of it sort of happening again, this time with my very-soon-to-be-born son's name. There's this little quaver in a corner of my heart telling me that the moment my wife and I announce his name to the webwide world, there's going to be some murmuring behind our backs accusing us of name plagiarism. To be completely honest, no, we most definitely did not do that. Neither of us are that dumb, that we saw some other kid's name and thought our child should have a similar one. And this isn't about just being different or unique. I want my children to develop their own identities.

I actually had decided on my son's name way back in high school. I came upon it while thinking of a name for a character based on myself but I thought I'd reserve it for my firstborn son (it's a name that anyone will almost automatically associate with me, so it's not what's causing my worries). By then I was satisfied with just that single name, never telling it to anyone for fear of it being stolen. Fast forward to 2009 when Jeean and I found out we were going to be parents. Despite the insistence of my friends that the baby would be a girl, I was sure it was going to be a boy and so a boy's name we created.

It was settled that he was going to have three names, like his father, and the first would be the one I've been keeping to myself for years, plus another letter. The second was a portmanteau of two family members' names, plus a suffix for impact. And the last one was my version of Junior. Name number one sounded Japanese, name two Greek, and name three Korean. It was great name and my wife and I were both happy with it (we actually came up with one more in case she was carrying twins, which then paved the way for a bunch of others because you never know, right?). Of course, when we found out the baby was a girl, we made an entirely new one from scratch and got Iaine Sivela Feona.

But now that there is a 100.13% certainty that we will be blessed with a baby boy, we can finally use the name when we fill up forms documenting his existence. Not ready to reveal it just yet so I'll conclude with some anagrams:

jai enjoys ireful ad 

jeean is fairly judo

iaine's de joyful jar

TL;DR (which means "too long; didn't read" for all you non-Redditors) No matter what anybody else says, my son's full name was invented seven years ago.