The Quest for a Name

Adopting, just like pregnancy, has some fun parts, and some not-so-fun parts.

I'm trying to untangle the facts about immigration right now. Not fun.
More on this soon (or not so soon, depending on how long it takes me to understand the process).

At the same time, Pablo and I are in the process of picking first names. Now that's fun!!
It's really not easy in our case, but the challenge is making it even more fun...
See, the problem is that half of our family is Spanish-speaking, while the other half is French-speaking. Because we want the name we pick to sound good in both languages, more than half of the names in baby name lists are a no-no for us!
While Etienne doesn't sound right in Spanish, Guillermo is unpronounceable in French.
Any name that has a J in it is a catastrophy, because the Spanish J isn't a sound in French, and vice versa.
So Jaime would sound Haime in French, but Julien would have this throaty sound in Spanish. (My own first name is a problem too, in fact...)
On top of that, names that are in fashion in South America may be fit for my grand-father's generation in Quebec, and Pablo sometimes laughs when I suggest a name which has been associated with a TV character in his culture.
And then, I grew up with 4 other Gen's in my class, and I hated this. I've always wished I had a more original first name. I mean, nothing too weird... just something I didn't share with half my generation...

We already have an idea of a girl's name, but boys names are a real puzzle.
So yesterday, after supper, we sat together and pulled a few lists from the Internet. Popular names in both languages, but also older and forgotten names. We went through the list, pronouncing the names in French and English. We both had to give up names we really liked because of the constraints we're dealing with. But we also had a few good laughs... Moshe is pretty funny in French...

In the end, we have 4 possible boys names. My first choice is Pablo's fourth, and I'm bothered a bit by the fact that two of those names are very popular right now in Quebec. But we're making way! And it's so much fun doing this together, I'm not sure I want us to settle on anything quite yet anyways :-)