My mother bought my first Cabbage Patch Kid doll when I was about 7 years old. The craze for the toys had just begun when I found Lily sitting on the shelf at the local toy store.

Discuss: Bad Baby Names

As I opened the box that night, I found her green and white adoption papers, which gave me the option to change her name to whatever I wanted.

At that moment, my obsession with baby names began.

Even in my high school relationship, when pregnancy was the scariest thing we had ever heard of, my boyfriend and I would come up with names for our hypothetical future children. I remember Thor and Esta, which would never make the real-world cut.

I know I'm not the only one who fantasizes about names. It's fun to dream about the future, honoring relatives and setting the stage for my child's name in lights.

Now that I'm actually trying to have children, is it too early to think about what I will call them? It may be premature, but it's too hard not to since I spend a lot of time on my computer.

As soon as I started thinking about trying, I found myself on Babynames.com, where I started a log of names that my friends and strangers can rate. Apparently, I have different tastes than my friends, who prefer to name their pretend children after ballparks and celebrities.

(Something about Safeco Brown just doesn't work for me.)

The site provides definitions and origins for classic names such as Susan -- meaning lily -- as well as new American names such as Adonica, an interesting mishmash of Adam and Monica. I tend to favor the more traditional names that mean something extravagant, like "desire born" or "warrior."

I also discovered baby-name generators that come up with crazy combinations without me having to do a thing.

On BabyGenie.com, you just plug in your last name and it comes up with suggestions. For my first round, I received Sydney Margaret, Harmony Rachel, Liberty Tyra, Talon Preston and Dwayne Justin.

It's fun to keep pushing the button like I might actually win a prize. None of the names appeals to me, but they conjure up some images of the least popular kid on the playground. Harold sounds about right.

Babynamewizard.com has been sent to me over the past few years as a cool link to play with at work. The NameVoyager offers a clever way to find out the most common names for any given year and how each name has changed in popularity.

On one of those work days when I knew that I truly had found the end of the Internet, I stumbled upon Parenting.com's baby name section. What I like here is that not only does it give you the origin, but also suggests nicknames and editorializes on the best version of a name. According to the site, Maisie and Daisy are "fresher" nicknames for Margaret than Meg, Maggie or Peggy. My kid will be pretty fresh, at least in that Kool and the Gang way.

I know there are hundreds of books out there about how to name a child. Thinking about hypothetical children is one thing; paying to think about them is too much for me.

When the generators fail me again, I turn to the mother of all baby name sites -- the Social Security Administration Web site. If you want to know the top 1,000 popular names in the United States -- or in a specific state --for any year after 1879, this is the place. My name was the 17th most popular in 1880. A true classic!

The more I look, the more my head spins, and I realize that I'm not ready to come up with a name for someone who doesn't exist yet. I've been told more than once by parents that when the time does come, all name ideas should be top secret.

The second a close relative gets a whiff, my favorite name could be tarnished forever.

"Wasn't that the name of that kid who picked on you in the playground?" or "Ugh, that reminds me of that nasty old lady down the street."

So I look to my husband who has an answer for everything. I know he thinks this speculation is a waste of time, unless he's the one speculating.

"Honey, what should we name our first born?" I ask, hoping that he'll pick one of my top five.

"My name, of course."

As I try to present a list of rational arguments as to why our child needs his own name despite his family's tradition, I stop myself. It's a nice hobby to daydream, but I have spent more than enough years on it

When the time comes, it will fall into place. And then my child will have many years to resent me for it.