Benezet
Rasielle
Two weeks before the birth of their first, Haruhi and Tamaki sat themselves down one evening and, between cups of hot tea and cocoa, began to choose names. It was painstaking on Haruhi's part, having to filter Tamaki's excited outbursts of Hawaiian and Welsh, but by midnight and the last washed dish, a sketchy list of 'least-ridiculous's had somehow put itself together.
Taro, Toshio, and a tentative Benezet; it would be a boy, of course, probably dark of hair and light of eye, and meant to be stoic with the years. T's and o's would be best.
As Haruhi cleared the kitchen counter, she found Tamaki still hadn't finished. In fact, he was still talking. "- and I think, my cute Haruhi, that the casual 'Ranka' would be a fine name for the progeny of our springtime love-"
"No," she said firmly, straightening the china. Even as he retreated to his corner - without the mushrooms, for this time it was a corner he had to help pay for - she could only fold the rags, shelve them, and repeat herself. "No. Never."
Then she paused, oblivious to her husband's hopeful intake of breath. "You know, there are easier ways to get on his good side, Tamaki. Ways that won't have to cost our son anything during his grade school years, at least."
Tamaki blinked. "Ways?"
"Like discarding 'Benezet', for one."
That night, Haruhi learned the hard way that a long-winded review of legendary French bloodlines would always, always upend the Tupperware.
-----
To their surprise - and the doctor's as well, discouraging though that may be - it was a girl. It - she - was a blonde, brown-eyed, wailing girl. 'Haruhi-eyed', according to Otou-san.
Tamaki would not, under any circumstance, tolerate female variations. He would come up with their new list from scratch.
-----
"Actually, her name was Blanche. We shouldn't use that name, though; Okasa never liked how her name sounded, and she didn't like one woman who shared it either. And anyway, don't you have a mother you miss too, Haruhi?"
-----
They chose Machi, ultimately, on the evening of the day she was born. Haruhi once had a friend in elementary school named Machi; she was not light-haired, Haruhi-eyed, nor wailing, but she was kind. And the name had a pretty, easy sound to it.
Best of all, there was nothing complicated about it, nothing to decipher. There was no real story attached. This way, it would be easier for the world to notice this wailing girl once she grows, lives the life of two, and makes the name hers.
--end.