Workaholic Dad

Over here in Germany when a child is born, you have to go to the city registers office for the official birth certificate. When you apply for the birth certificate you have to pick a name for the child, which in turn needs to be approved by the clerk. In our case, we chose the name Mackenzie Skye for our little baby girl. It took a long time to come up with a middle name, since we have wanted to name our daughter for as long as we have been together – 8 years – and need to make it fit to our very German last name.

After browsing many name pages and saying her full name out loud and thinking up what perception the name would bring we figured it might be tough to get the name approved.

Exactly one month ago today I sent an email to the city clerk asking for approval of the name. A week went by and I hadn’t heard anything – big surprise. Reluctantly I picked up the phone and dialed their number, well within business hours posted on their website, and was surprised that no one picked up. I tried again several times over the course of the next few days – nothing. Then finally, much to my surprise, an actual human being picked up the phone. After a little bit of chit chat I was told Mackenzie can be both a boys and a girls name so by itself it wouldn’t work. Skye on the other hand I was told is only a guy’s name, so no dice. How she arrived at the conclusion that Skye is exclusively a guys name is beyond me, but she must have her reasons.

Our alternative – add a third first name that is exclusively and positively a girls name. Now to me this seems like a perfect opportunity to pick the ugliest, most horrible name, given that besides the birth certificate she would never be called that name anyways. But my wife isn’t sold on that idea just yet, she thinks it would be cruel and unusual punishment.

But back to the story. I browsed the internet and put together a few links for her which show that Mackenzie is indeed a very popular girls name – number 22 on the popularity scale for 2007 – and a few references that Skye is indeed a girls name as well. I sent this email 2 weeks ago and to this day I have not heard back.

At this point Fellula, Gertrud and Ursula sound pretty good as a third first name, what do you think?