The second the word “pregnant” turned up on my Clearblue digital pregnancy test for my first baby, pink lines for my latter babies, my first thought was always, “I need to know their names!” And every time, I panic. My anxiety is all thanks to Peter from 6th grade.

Or, as I call him, Peter…grr.

I’m sure I perfected my scowl in 6th grade because of Peter…grr. In fact, I’m sure of it. Middle school was already rough and I didn’t need Peter to make it worse. He did anyway. On the first day of my pre-algebra class, I sat right up front. For all my teacher knew, my name was Eager.

If you were to meet my pre-algebra teacher, you’d immediately sigh and say, “oh, bless your heart.” The permanent slump that she developed while helping a student at his or her desk displayed her many years of teaching. Her short, white hair wisped and her dulcet Southern accent reminded me of sweet tea and sugar cookies on a porch surrounded by gardenias. So, I couldn’t blame her and her dulled hearing for not understanding how to pronounce my name.

Peter didn’t have to take advantage of it.

But he did.

I heard the mispronunciation of my name roll off his tongue followed by raucous laughter. For the rest of the year, the sweet tea and cookies accent that once mispronounced my name was echoed by the peanut gallery who sat catty-corner to my desk.

Peter…grr. That’s one name I’ll never use for my babies.

But I couldn’t ignore the worry. What if Peter from the 6th grade turns up in my kids’ lives anyway? Would they begin to feel resentment to attending pre-algebra, and it’s not just because it’s math? What if they were meant to be engineers, but Peter destroyed their love of math like he destroyed their names? What other consequences could there be? Would they make bad life choices simply because their names were used against them?

I carried these thoughts throughout my 3 pregnancies. They fueled my research. Most people googled the best car seats, cribs, baby safety items, and sleep training tricks—my rabbit holes were filled with endless searches about the most popular name, weird spellings of names, name meanings, and actors and actresses with the same name. Don’t get started about the time I found out that one particular spelling of my daughter’s name was the name of a prolific adult film star. I think I stayed up all night imagining the worst.

In the end, I gave all my kids a chance to shorten their unique names to popular nicknames. What’s funny to me is that even though I gave them this option, they still opt to write their full names. They also introduce themselves by their full name, at least most of the time.

So there, Peter. Neidy, not Needy, Maidy, Nee-igh-tee, or Nadine, named her children unique names despite your howlings. Oh, and I still loved pre-algebra. I bet my kids will, too.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "A Name".