Who would have thought that we’d wind up unanticipatedly calling our baby by a name shared with musicians, athletes, and [the actors who play] genetic freaks of note? In all the name vetting we’ve done for years, I’ve been the nay-sayer. “We couldn’t name a boy Lucas because of that movie starring Corey Haim.” “I like the name Finnegan, but he’d get his butt whipped every day after school.” I can’t think of any of the girl names I rejected on the off chance that some bizarre child could find a contorted way of using the name to abuse our child. But rest assured that there were many.

We liked the name Lennon, and though I wasn’t especially turned on by the middle name Louise, I was ok with it because it’s a family name that means a lot to M. We had intended to call the baby Lennie, and we do. We had also joked about calling her a sort of redneckish Lennie Lou, which we have actually sort of appropriated precisely because it sounds so silly. You’re supposed to talk silly to babies, after all. What we hadn’t anticipated was that we might settle on just Lou. I’m not quite there yet, but it’s not uncommon for M to address Lennie as Lou, and I have to admit it’s kind of growing on me.

See if you can pick Lennie Lou out from among some of the celebrities she’s beginning to share a name with: