Don’t think that I don’t know what she’s doing, because I do. I wasn’t born yesterday.

For months, we have been trying out possible names for the new baby, initially volleying suggestions back and forth like a couple of senior citizens lobbing tennis balls back and forth across the net before recognizing, sometime along the way, that somebody would eventually need to win the point. What was once a leisurely, even whimsical, pursuit, has now taken on a sense of urgency similar to trying to find a rest-stop on a long road trip when you’ve had too much Mountain Dew. We’re running out of time. The baby is due in February, and our relationship has suddenly become the Middle East. Her position is that because she is the mother, she has divine sovereignty over the whole land, while I just want her to recognize my right to exist. Maybe we should name the baby Yasser Arafat Cox. I’m pretty sure she would sooner go for that than some of the names I actually do like.

The crux of our problem in negotiating a settlement is that I prefer good, solid, reliable names — James, Walter, Ethan, Miles, Emily, Amy, Annabelle, and so on — while she favors names that are, let’s see here, “original.” Just before Christmas, she became enamored with the name “Hassani,” an Arabic name that translates as “the guy with the suspicious looking tennis shoes.” Or, as one of my less sensitive relatives put it, “That’s fine, honey, as long as he never plans to ride on a plane.”

I know we’re trafficking now in dangerous stereotypes, which I would not want little James or little Hassani to do, so let me put it another, more diplomatic way — it just doesn’t sound right. It’s a cultural train wreck. What if NBA Hall of Fame center Lew Alcindor had changed his name to Jim Abdul-Jabbar or Bob Abdul-Jabbar instead of Kareem? The words just will not sit together — “Furniture Pie,” “Anvil Blossom,” “Campaign Finance Reform.” That’s what poor Hassani would be up against, and probably without a devastating sky hook shot to bail him out.

Unfortunately, my names are all cursed with instant associations, no matter how trivial or how remote. I happen to LIKE associations. I like the name “Miles,” for example, because it is not only my grandmother’s maiden name, but also the name of jazz legend, Miles Davis, one of my heroes. I like Walter because it reminds me of Walt Whitman, and Emily because of Emily Dickinson or Emily Post. Isn’t it possible that our daughter, inspired by her name, could grow up to be a great poet with impeccable manners?

Unfortunately, Tammy has other associations. Miles was a character on a television show she once watched, and Walter a goldfish she had in third grade. That rules them out. Then there is the problem of name saturation. In her school yearbook, there were 17 Emily’s, 14 Amy’s, and 12 Ethan’s. Do I want our child to have a name as common as Toyota Camry’s in a mall parking lot? Well, do I?

One night a month or so ago, utterly exasperated by our lack of progress, I threw up my hands after a half dozen of my suggestions, which took the better part of a day thumbing through a baby name book to identify, were shot down bang bang bang like ducks in a shooting gallery.

“OK,” I said. “What about Velveeta? Guacamole? Constantinople? Electrolux? Grackle?”

“Grackle, huh?”

For the next two weeks, Tammy took to referring to the baby as “Grackle,” going so far as to put the name in red icing on a Christmas sugar cookie, which, as far as I was concerned, was taking the joke one step too far.

“Honey, we cannot name our child ‘Grackle,’” I said.

“Well, why not?” she said.

“Well, for one thing, it would mean that we were insane,” I said patiently. “For another, we cannot name our son or daughter after an obnoxious bird. According to the Internet, the grackle is considered a pest by most people, steals food from robins, and has, and I quote, ‘a song that sounds something like a rusty gate.”

I had done my research, just in case. I knew my grackles.

“Shhh, he might hear you,” she said, rubbing her round belly in a gesture of soothing the baby.

I’m sure — pretty sure, anyway — that she does not really want to name the baby “Grackle,” or “Velveeta.” I know what she’s doing. She is stalling, glad to be running out of time. Her plan is to get me in the delivery room, when she is red-faced and pushing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf trying to blow down my house of straw. When I am pale-faced and squeamish and feeling guilty beyond reason in not sharing the burden of delivery, and the look on her face says, buddy boy, YOU try pushing a bowling ball through a straw. No really, sweetie, you just sit there and have a Coke and a smile and leave the screaming, and the bleeding, and the tearing of flesh, and all of the searing pain to ME. Really, it’s OK. You just relax now. This can’t be easy for you. I’m sure that paper hat is uncomfortable, and it can’t be easy seeing me this way. Now, WHAT did you say you wanted to name the baby?

“Well, he looks like ‘Hassani’ to me.”

I wasn’t born yesterday.

(Chris Cox is a writer and teacher who lives in Waynesville. He can be reached at chriscox@prodigy.net.)