I think I mentioned a little while ago that I was considering shortening the baby's name to just Cal, because people keep calling him Calvin even after I'd corrected them a dozen times. That's still happening...and I'm starting to be angry/irritated when people say Calvin, which isn't a good emotion to feel about your baby's name, right?
I brought this up with Aaron, and he admitted that while he liked the name Calvin, he wasn't overly in love with the fact that it means bald. I asked him how he felt about just naming the baby Cal. He said he liked Cal, but thought he might prefer a longer version. And that's how the two of us became "Cal" name detectives. Haha! We looked up and researched every possible name that might lead us to the nickname Cal. Everything from Caloway to Pascal and back again. Some of the names we really liked the meaning of (i.e. Calum means "dove") but didn't like the sound of the name spoken out loud. And others were just the opposite, we liked how they sounded out loud, but didn't like the meaning (i.e. Caloway means pebbly place, Callahan reminds me too much of Tommy Boy). (Apparently we aren't the only ones who have ever tried to do this either. I ran across this baby name article, that I thought was so funny.) After a week or so of researching these names and their meanings and origins, Aaron finally said that out of all the names we'd looked at he still like Calvin best, and I agreed.
I added that I wish Cal had a meaning besides just "the diminutive of Calvin". And I told Aaron that I'd dreamed several times that the baby came out a girl instead of a boy, but that was ok, because if the baby came out a girl, we'd just name her Calla, which means beautiful in greek and castle/fortress in Arabic. Beautiful Castle/Fortress is a meaning I could get behind. It's lovely. Aaron wondered if maybe there was a male version of Calla that we could look up. So we started researching again.
This time, instead of trying to look up meanings for the NAME Cal, we decided to look of the etymology of the prefix Cal (think like in the word calorie). And what we found couldn't be more perfect actually. :) In Latin Cal means heat. In Sanskrit it means heat specifically related to the time of year when food is harvested. So, if you take both of those meanings and reword them slightly you get "late summer harvest". It's perfect because #1 This baby will be a late summer baby and #2 It's special because the garden, and the harvest we've gotten from it, have been a sanctuary to me during this pregnancy. I've mentioned more than a few times how grateful I've been to have a place for my mind to go, and something for my hands to do. Naming my baby after the "late summer harvest" holds an incredible amount of meaning for me. I was all set to just name him Cal and call it good. :) But Aaron still wasn't sure. He was definitely open to the idea, but was still wondering if he might prefer a longer name on the birth certificate. Instead of pushing him, we made a deal. We wouldn't decide anything until the baby was born and we had a chance to meet him. Then we could see how we felt about it. Aaron agreed. Secretly in my hearth though, I'm hoping we get to name him just Cal.
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