Hello. My Name Is MomQueenBee.

My first professional job was as a reporter on a small-town newspaper. It was then that I developed my aversion to unusual names. At the risk of offending their parents, I would say that children with unique names were the bane of my existence. Or rather, the names of children with unique names made me chew my fingernails and mutter grimly to myself.

"Okay, I know that Jason was spelled some way besides the regular way--was it Jaysin?  Jaeson? Jaysan?"

Brittany could be spelled eight or ten or ninety-two ways, and I came to hope that Britnee was an underachiever who never won anything or expected to see her name in the paper. Otherwise I would have to ask (again) if that was with double T's, or double E's, or maybe had she decided to start spelling it Brritny? Aaaargh!

That's why I laid down some ground rules when we began discussing names for the Boys. They had to be solid names that were pronounced and spelled one way and one way only. (I'm ignoring that my own name has two acceptable spellings and that mine is the less common of the variations.)

As a result, we ended up with a couple of Old Testament prophets, an apostle, and one named after his suitably-monikered grandfathers. Common spelling and pronunciation all around.

And that's why, when I run into the parents of Boy#1's friends from high school, they invariably ask, "And how's Forbes doing?"

That's right. One may have been named after a prophet but his high school nickname, imposed by his nerdy friends when he was the 14-year-old spittin' image of a former presidential candidate, is the name that has stuck.

We should have called him Shaka Smart or Moussa Koussa. Those men obviously started life pre-nicknamed.