Over Christmas Day dessert, our daughter
handed us the sonogram. Our first grandchild
would be due in June and be a boy.

We began riffing through names
but our top five appeared
on all the recent lists of popularity –
so, no, we had to keep digging.

What’s more, our daughter had requirements:
the name must resist being shortened,
should flow into the one-syllable last name,
cannot shimmer with religious vibes
nor possess literary, cinematic, or Disney ties
nor be unisex or the name of anyone in their circle.

I presented the sonorous names Django, Jasper, and Orlando,
each with a short “a” rhyming with the last name,
and the trochaic Lonzo.
All choices were considered odd.

I suggested playground names, like Nico and Leo,
workspace names, like Hamilton and Sebastian,
names that roll softly from the tongue like Elias.
Elijah in conjunction with the clipped last name
recommended itself for the musicality
of a pair of iambs, matching short A sounds,
a consonance of Ls,
and the way the soft J and hard K
in the surname balanced each other.
Elijah was not an option.

Then I consulted the alphabet,
offered names with ancient energy like Quentin and Merlin,
lyrical names with a gentle masculinity:
Ezekiel, Hugo, Micah, Hosea, Ezra, and Luca.
I considered player names from World Cup rosters
and pulled the entertaining Cocanut from last month’s local primary ballot.
You can guess our daughter’s response.

Having emptied my stash
of impeccable names,
I stepped back, finally.
The future had already chosen.