Chapter 43. The Shape of a Name

“Too soon,” I’d thought back in October.

Marina had just gotten her first ultrasound, and we could see a flicker on the screen—a heartbeat. But everything still felt fragile and theoretical. We wouldn’t dare give that tiny speck a name yet.

Instead, we settled on Jaidan, a placeholder that somehow became our code name for the baby. By then, we’d been using it for so long it had started to sound alarmingly real.

“We need to buy the plane tickets for when Jaidan is born,” we’d say.
Or: “Do you think Jaidan will be tall?”

Somewhere along the way, the fake name stopped feeling fake.

It also solved a small linguistic problem with Marina. In Spanish, “Jai-dan” drifted close enough to “Jayden” that she adopted it immediately.

“What if we actually named him Jayden?” Jaime asked one night in January, after we’d crossed the first-trimester threshold and started behaving like maybe—maybe—this baby would actually exist outside an ultrasound screen.

“Isn’t that a little self-indulgent?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well… it’s basically a combination of our names. Like, here you go, kid. We made you entirely in our image.”

Jaime laughed. “That’s not exactly rare. I have my dad’s name. Your brother has your dad’s name. Half the men in Mexico are named after their father.”

“True,” I said.

I tried it out loud anyway, using Marina’s pronunciation.

“I’m Daniel, this is my husband Jaime, and this is our son, Jayden.”

I stopped.

“It sounds less like a baby and more like a seventh grader with strong opinions about protein powder,” I said.

Jaime burst out laughing. “Okay. Maybe not.”

“Okay,” I said. “What do we actually want in a name?”

I opened the Notes app.

“No douchey names,” Jaime said, still smiling.

“Brad, Bret, Chad—eliminated,” I said. “What else?”

“We need something that works in English and Spanish,” he said. “Starbucks has taught me that lesson too many times to ignore it.”

“Hi, Hi-mee,” I said, in my best barista voice. “Oat chai for Jaime.”

We both laughed.

The search drifted after that—less a project than something that kept resurfacing at odd moments. On the train. In the middle of emails. Half-awake before bed.

My Notes app started collecting names like stray receipts: Alexis, Ander, Elio, Jordi, Leo, Robin, Sam.

Some stayed longer than others. Alexis lingered near the top for weeks—soft, familiar, working in both languages. It felt right in a way that didn’t demand attention. But eventually we let it go when we realized how quickly it would become Alex—and we already had too many of those in the family.

So the list shifted again. Shrunk. Expanded. Lost shape.

By March, it had become something we were actively circling rather than casually maintaining. We had a short list now, though none of it felt like certainty.

Then one Saturday in April, the weather finally broke, and we took the ferry to Astoria.

We liked that trip—the slow lift away from Manhattan, the way the city rearranged itself when seen from the water. The ferry always felt like a reset button.

That day, it was packed with the first real optimism of spring. Sunglasses were back. Strollers were being unfolded with ceremony. People held iced coffee like it was a seasonal right they’d been denied for months. The skyline looked sharper than it had any right to.

We found seats near the window.

“What about the rest of his name?” I asked.

“What about it?” Jaime said.

“Well, if we’re going to live here, he’s probably going to need a middle name.”

Middle names weren’t really a thing for Jaime or me. In Mexico, most people didn’t use them. When we moved to the States, we realized how often forms insisted on something that didn’t exist.

Instead, we had two last names—first the father’s, then the mother’s. A structure that made sense in theory until you had to fit it on an airline ticket.

“Two last names is already a lot,” Jaime said. “Now a middle name too?”

“I know,” I said. “But I also don’t want him getting flagged by some airline computer because his name is too… efficient.”

He laughed. “Efficiency is dangerous.”

I knew exactly how quickly names got chopped down in practice. My own last name had been mutilated on everything from diplomas to boarding passes. Somewhere between systems, identity always became optional.

“Also,” I said, “he should have both of ours. Obviously.”

That part wasn’t negotiable. Not just sentiment, but practicality. I’d read enough to know that traveling as a family sometimes meant proving you were a family—especially when nothing about you matched the default assumption.

So the rule became simple: clarity over convenience.

The ferry stopped at Roosevelt Island. Manhattan slid past us like a moving photograph. More people boarded, shrugging off jackets, as if the city had collectively agreed winter was no longer worth discussing.

I scrolled through the list again and started deleting.

Sebastian went. Santiago. Leonardo.

“Trust me,” I said. “We’ll save ourselves a lifetime of spelling things out over the phone.”

We still hadn’t landed on anything when we reached Astoria.

The air was warmer than it had been in months, but still uncertain—like spring testing the boundaries before committing. A few overly optimistic people had already laid out picnic blankets in the park, pretending fifty-eight degrees was a guarantee.

At the restaurant, we ordered what we always ordered: lemon potatoes, Greek salad, phyllo-baked cheese, and a branzino for two. House wine came in half-liter jugs for barely more than ten dollars, which always felt like a loophole in the universe.

“Do you realize how many names we’ve eliminated just because of people we’ve known?” I said. “I could never name a kid Gustavo.”

“That kid in elementary school really did a number on you,” Jaime said.

“I’m still recovering.”

“Never Donald,” he added.

“Because of the duck,” I said.

“Obviously.”

We laughed.

After lunch, we walked along the river. The wind coming off the water still had teeth, enough to keep people moving rather than lingering. The sky shifted toward evening, softening at the edges.

As we walked, something in me circled back to the conversation we’d been having for months.

“Well,” I said, “if we don’t want a name that reminds us of people we disliked… why not one that reminds us of people we love?”

Jaime glanced over. “What do you mean?”

“Do you have a pen?”

He stopped walking. “Just tell me.”

“No. I need to write it.”

He sighed, half amused, and started digging through his bag. He found a pen and handed it to me along with an old receipt.

“Good enough?” he asked.

“Perfect.”

I wrote down a name. Six letters.

Then I paused.

“Who do we know named Oliver?” Jaime asked.

“Look,” I said.

I drew a line through the middle.

Oli / Ver.

It took him a second. Then another.

His mom’s name: Olivia.
My mom’s name: Veronica.

“The first half is hers,” I said. “The second half is mine.”

He didn’t respond immediately. Just looked at it, like he was checking the math of something that felt more like luck than logic.

Then he smiled.

“It works,” he said quietly.

And it did. In more ways than one. It worked in English and Spanish. It was short enough to survive bureaucracy. Familiar without being everywhere. Soft without disappearing.

But mostly, it felt like something that had already been there, waiting.

“It’s not bad,” I said. “For a kid with two dads. He gets both grandmothers built in.”

Jaime nodded. “It’s perfect.”

We didn’t say it again right away.

As the ferry carried us back across the river, something shifted—not dramatically, not all at once, but like a door easing shut in the background. Jaidan, the name that had carried us through early scans and cautious hope, began to loosen its grip.

We still used it. Out of habit. Out of superstition.

But now there was something underneath it.

Something heavier.

Oliver.

For a while, we barely said it out loud. It felt like speaking it too often might disturb whatever fragile agreement had formed.

We shared it slowly. First with Marina. Then with family. Eventually, at the baby shower, it appeared on a cake, piped in careful frosting, and became real in front of other people’s eyes.

And after that, it stopped being private.

Oliver kicking during ultrasounds.
Oliver’s clothes folded into drawers.
Oliver, arriving soon.

Then sooner.
Then almost here.