Franbert has now been gestating in the womb for 24 weeks and Sarah’s belly has begun to grow very quickly. It’s hard to imagine she still has almost four months left to go before Franbert is finally unleashed upon us.
We continue to wrestle with potential names. I’ve already read multiple baby name books and have at least one more to read before I arrive at my final short list. I’ve also been looking over the site of the Sociale Verzekeringsbank and voornamelijk.nl, but learning the currently popular names is of only so much use when you believe that your coming child will be unique and therefore deserves a name that is not shared by countless others.
On the other hand, even the most popular name is actually given to relatively few children, simply because so many names are given in total. So, in the end, you don’t really have to worry about there being half a dozen Sannes or Sems in the same class at school.
If we knew the sex in advance, we’d only have to come up with one name, but that would be a cop-out, so we’ll do the work and come up with two. Besides, we can save the other name for next time, assuming we get the other gender next time.
Popular Dutch Baby Names
While you could ask where Sem and Senna came from–they’re the top boy and girl names, respectively for 2004–it’s more interesting to compare the classical (to my ear) Dutch names that were popular in 1939–Johannes, Jan, Hendrik, Willem, Johanna, Wil…