Age = 22 days

Linus

My starting point for picking a name was a preference for names that are uncommon but not too weird or difficult to spell. I also wanted to avoid a name that would open a child up to excessive teasing, but I also figure that if someone’s going to pick on you, they’ll find something to attack regardless of your name.

My next consideration was wanting a name with meaning to me and Bob, which meant using a name from one (or more) of:

• Classical (Greek/Roman) Mythology: This is subject I’m quite interested in, and a source of lots of interesting names and characters.
• Astronomy: Bob and I are both (very casually) interested in astronomy, so a name with astronomical significance is appealing, with the added bonus that given that many astronomical objects are named after figures from – you guessed it – classical mythology.
• Family: It would be a bonus to find a name we liked that is already present in the family tree somewhere (preferably a direct ancestor).

In hunting through the men, gods and demi-gods from the realm of classics, I really struggled to find any names I’d burden a kid with these days. With choices like “Agamemnon”, “Odysseus”, and “Uranus”, I was thrilled when I discovered that “Linus” was the name of a couple of minor players in the Greek pantheon.

In addition to the classical origin, “Linus” had some other attractions. It is the name of the creator of Linux, a piece of software that Bob is becoming proficient at; it looks similar to “Linda”, but without sounding similar enough to be confusing; it met the criteria of being unusual but not weird (by my standards, anyway); and it is the name of a Peanuts comics character who had a blankie, just like I did as a child (well, mine was a “Cuddles”, but close enough!). (His aunty’s nickname is also “Snoopy”.)

And after Linus was born, my uncle was kind enough to send me a link to the “Linus” entry in Wikipedia. On reading this I was pleased to discover that Linus was also the name of an astronomical body – that was the icing on the cake!

Robert

It’s fairly obvious where this name comes from – it’s Linus’s daddy’s name! Although Bob chose to be called “Bob” rather than “Robert”, he doesn’t really dislike the name, and it’s nice that Linus’s name contains his father’s name (especially since their last names aren’t the same).

Brown

We decided fairly early on that we didn’t like double-barrelled names, so we would have to choose between “Brown” and “Patterson” as Linus’s last name (since although Bob and I are married, I’ve kept my last name). We also wanted whatever name we didn’t choose to still be referenced in our children’s names (any future children will probably be named that same way, i.e. with “Brown” as a second middle name and “Patterson” as a last name).

It’s a little unusual to have “Brown” as a middle name, but looking back through old family trees reveals that it is in fact very common for children to receive a family surname (most commonly their mother’s maiden name) as a middle name.

Patterson

A couple of weeks before Linus arrived I left Bob with the choice to either give the baby “Patterson” as a last name or leaving it as a 50/50 (e.g. tossing a coin). This “choice” is obviously biased towards my preference, but Bob acknowledged that giving our child my last name was more important to me than passing on his last name was to Bob.

The decision itself was made within an hour of Linus being born. I simply asked Bob “what’s his last name?”, and he said “Patterson”. I don’t know if he was too overcome with emotion to think straight, or if he was super-impressed by what he’d just seen me push out, but he said “Patterson” without a pause and I didn’t see any reason to argue!

“Bug”

“Bug” was Linus’s name in-utero. The original reason for this was that A) he was making me feel unwell, so he was my “tummy bug”, and B) “Bug” was a nickname of Bob’s briefly in England when we were staying with our friend UK Bob and were trying to avoid confusion.

There were extra reasons that “Bug” stuck as the in-utero name. It was cute sounding (“cute as a bug’s ear”; “snug as a bug in a rug”); it was short (like any good nickname); and it was gender-neutral.

We discovered another “explanation” for his name just a few weeks before he was born: my family had apparently “known” for a while that “Bug” was chosen because it meant “Baby of Unknown Gender”. We were very impressed when we heard this explanation, but we can’t take credit for thinking of it, and have no idea who did!