The Lemur

Before Liam was born and became "Liam," he had a few names in the womb. The dominant name was "The Baber." Properly preceded by the article, and ending in -er, "The Baber" was rare enough to distinguish our child from just any "Baby." Naturally, the existence of the first name, created opportunities for recombination, and so arose "The Bader," and "The Bager" both pronounced with a long "a" as in bagel.

When we got our ultrasound pictures at week 20 post conception, one frontal shot of the head took some sort of demonic form. A velociraptor perhaps. As a former, and not-quite-reformed velociraptor myself, I was a proud father to be. The other name for this same image, of course, was Darth Baber. You can plainly see the sinister visage below:

From Tea and Kate

Before we finally settled on Liam, the term "The Babento" came to the fore. With a Spanish feel "The Banento" added some zest to the otherwise too-English names.

Now that Liam's been born, however, things have taken a new turn. Here is our own little son, young Liam, fresh to world, and Katie and I are already coming up with names for him. One of these names I've taken the time to graphically represent, for mnemonic purposes. The derivation goes something like this.

Liam.

Liam-er.

Leemer.

Sounds like Lemur.

So, we call him Lemur.
Naturally, the long form is Lemur Beamer:


Beyond Lemur, however, are a host of other names, including the term applied to a child swaddled in a small blanket, "Babe-urrito." See below for a "Babe-urrito."


He is also known as "The Creature," and "Mr. Squiggles" upon occasion, and thanks to our friends Maggie and Abe who have a daughter about 2 months older than Liam, "Fuss McGuss," for his more petulant moods. Recently, a sitting pose that Katie uses to burp him has inspired thoughts of simian ancestry, and thus, the name "Monker."

The following is NOT a picture of a Monker:


The term Monker is applied only to a particular sittong-up burping posture, and can be asked of someone. For instance, "Liam will you give us a Monker?" It just so happens that Liam doesn't always like doing his Monkers.

If names are meant to help us grasp our wonder at the world, then we've only begun to tackle the wonder we feel when we gaze at our little bug. (We call him "Bug" a lot too.) Some things we can't even put into words. Like how we feel when we see this: