His Royal Highness, Prince Mast Hugger Carl

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/04/2018 (3011 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a veteran husband and father, I have decided to take a few valuable minutes today to offer my services to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Those of you with too much time on your hands will know that, on Monday, Prince William and Kate stood on the steps outside the Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s Hospital in London to unveil their brand-new eight-pound, seven-ounce baby boy.

The baby Prince of Cambridge is the couple’s third child and second son and his arrival was celebrated with traditional gun salutes from the Tower of London and Hyde Park.

It was marked also by people such as myself who spent a considerable amount of time lying on our couches, staring up at our big-screen TVs while news stations around the world broadcast thrilling live footage of the doors to the hospital, which, for hours, were doing nothing interesting until Prince William and Kate staggered out to unveil the new royal infant.

For those of you who currently do not own a baby, I will point out that the most difficult challenge faced by new parents is coming up with a suitable name, especially when you are part of a large family comprising extremely opinionated people.

Choose the wrong name and your child will spend its formative years as a member of the chess club and having its head dunked in the toilet. (For the record, I think highly of chess.)

As I sit here typing these words on Tuesday morning, the world was waiting with bated breath for the royal couple to announce the name they have selected for their new arrival. Royals traditionally keep the public guessing before revealing their choice, because they have to spill the beans to the Queen first, and you never know how she is going to react.

According to British bookies, Arthur has emerged as the most likely moniker for the little gaffer, with James, Albert and Edward in reasonably hot pursuit.

It is entirely possible that by the time you read these words, the royal baby name will have been officially unveiled, but that is not going to prevent me from offering some helpful advice to the happy couple.

Based on my own experience as the father of two children, the secret to naming a baby is to get your spouse to agree with whatever goofy name you happen to like, even if they initially think it is extremely stupid.

For instance, both of my kids — Liam and Kayleigh, who are currently fully functioning adults — spent their first couple of weeks as “Baby Boy Speirs” and “Baby Girl Speirs” because I was engaged in a waiting game with my beloved spouse, She Who Must Not Be Named, who had her own ideas on what her children should be called.

In the end, out of sheer exasperation, my wife decided the names I had come up with were brilliant, because she did not relish the idea of opening the door to our home in a few years and yelling at the top of her voice: “BABY BOY SPEIRS, IT’S TIME TO COME HOME FOR DINNER!”

It is much easier to come up with names today, thanks to the invention of the internet, which is a computer thing created to make it easier to access photographs of Pamela Anderson wearing a bathing suit.

Another thing you will find on the internet are dozens and dozens of baby-name generators that, with a few clicks of the mouse, will spit out nifty new names that you can attach to your baby without having to go to the bother of thinking them up yourself.

Before obtaining baby names, however, it occurred to me that William and Kate might want something a little flashier to help their new son stand out, which is why I checked out an online Hobbit Name Generator, wherein you can find your Hobbit name after punching in your real name.

This presented a challenge in the sense that the new royal baby doesn’t actually have a first name, so I arbitrarily called him “Arthur” (as that is what the bookies want) and then typed in his official royal family name, which is (pause for dramatic effect) Mountbatten-Windsor, a combination of his grandparents’ Philip’s and Elizabeth’s names.

The point is the new prince’s top two Hobbit names were “Mungo Chubb-Baggins” and “Mungo Trample of Wood End.”

As cool as those were, they didn’t seem to have enough cachet for a new royal kid, so I zipped over to a Pirate Name Generator and again punched in “Arthur Mountbatten-Windsor.” The top suggested boy pirate names were “Mast Hugger Carl” and “Pirate Roger the Infected.”

Those are definitely the kinds of names that will get you noticed at school, but, in an effort to provide the duke and duchess with as many choices as possible, I also visited a number of sites that were home to baby name generators, including the Hipster Baby Name Generator.

The first thing I had to do was select the baby’s gender (the third option was “non-conformist”), then click on their future eating habits (”Gluten-free, paleo and vegan, thank you very much”), then type in their sleeping habits (”They saw logs in their sleep to make reclaimed pine coffee tables”), and finally enter the tot’s “mainstream” last name.

The top hipster baby name this process produced was “Ernest Thorn Spruce Mountbatten-Windsor,” followed by “Walter Grey Elm Mountbatten-Windsor,” both of which conjure up an image of a tiny prince with an impressive neck beard and a penchant for wearing plaid lumberjack-style shirts while quaffing organic coffee and local craft beer.

Over at BabyNameGenie.com, the magical genie’s top suggestions for a royal boy baby were “Lawson Hayden Mountbatten-Windsor” and “Cannon Amari Mountbatten-Windsor,” which seem like the kind of upscale names that would look good on monogrammed towels.

On the other hand, the easiest thing for Kate and William to do would be to just go with the flow and give their new son the most popular boys name for 2018, which is… OK, hold on while I look up the most popular boys name.

According to BabyCenter.com, this year’s most popular choice for baby boys is… “Liam,” which just happens to be my son’s name. Call me an unbiased professional journalist if you must, but I think Prince Liam has a nice ring to it.

I can’t wait to tell my wife what a good choice I made.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca