OT: Where did your child's name come from?

@crazy4boys – How fun!

My Zeke is the same way. He won’t even learn to spell his real name. “Why, Mama? Z E K E is so much easier!”

I originally wanted to name my oldest daughter Jordan…this was back in 1987 before Jordan became really popular and was rarely used for a girl.  My mother thought it sounded like a boy name so I got the baby name book out to show her it is also a girl’s name.  One of the derivatives of Jordan was Jordana [short a sound like Anna]  I liked it.  She liked it.  It worked

Jordana [descending, down ward like the Jordan river] Kathleen- Her middle name was after my mother

Andrew [manly] Christopher  -Andrew is a family name and Christopher is my hubby’s first name.

Mikayla [who is like Christ] Faith — this baby was going to have some form of Michael in it’s name because it’s a family name and we liked it.  Her middle name came about because when I first found out I was pregnant with her the doctor thought I was having a miscarriage.  I also didn’t like the dr and contemplated changing dr’s.  I had a very healthy pregnancy and ended up realizing that this pregnancy required a lot of faith on my end….one to have faith that I wasn’t miscarrying….and that this was the dr. the Lord wanted me to use.

Hannah [grace] Marie — until Hannah was born we thought she was going to be a boy and didn’t really have many girl names picked.  When the nurse laid her in my arms the first thing that came to me was Hannah Marie….I told my husband we were to call her Hannah Marie.  He looked at me quizzically as in….where did THAT name come from.  So I said…”Here you hold her”.  As soon as she was placed in her arms he looked at me and said…”yep, her name is Hannah Marie”

Aaron [mountain of strength] Michael–  It’s funny about his name cause he is now 14 years old….is 6′ 5″ and weighs close to 300.  He is extremely strong too.

Nicholas [victory of the people] Jeremiah–  His middle name was to be Tanner but right before he was born a friend called me with a Scripture pertaining to this pregnancy and it was in Jeremiah so we changed his middle name so we would always remember.

*off the subject.  My daughter is likes to write also and is so fascinated with names.  She has many lists of names she has collected. 🙂

Carson Leigh Elizabeth (+ our last too) …

My father’s first name was Carson and he died when I was six so I always thought I’d use his name with my children somehow.  We kind of knew we’d need a girly name to carry off Carson, but we didn’t figure it out until my husband burst out with Lee! at a red light in front of the hospital she ended up being born in later.  As in John Lee Hooker the famous blues musician.  We changed to a girl’s spelling for Leigh and tada.  Her first name was born.  A double!  That keeps us always saying “yes, it is a double first name” or “please use her full first name, it’s a double” … lots of fun!  Elizabeth goes down both sides of our families forever and is the middle name of my best friend from college.

Jackson Ezra Cole (+ our last too) ….

One of my best friends was diagnoised with cancer while I we were both pregnant with our second children.  Her madien name was Jackson and she used it professionally when we worked together years before children.  It always sounded so cool to me.  It made me wish I’d kept my madien name as so many Southern women do.  When she lost her battle with cancer (after delivering her son) I knew my son’s name would be Jackson after her.  Ezra is after the author Ezra Jack Keats.  We were good … two names, right?  Then we thought “oh no, he will think we didn’t love him as much as her!” and so came his third name – Cole.  It was printed on an old family tree painting that my grandmother had hanging in her hallway … just a little, green leaf that read Cole.  And so that rounded out his name.  Of course he thinks it’s all weird.  He asks to be renamed all the time.  I will not share the 9 year old boy things he thinks would make a great name!!  We laugh and say Jackson is his strong dude, cool guy name and Ezra is his name when he starts his first band and Cole is his name when he becomes a lawyer. 

I too LOVE names!  Our oldest two daughters, Jennifer and Angel, were named by their birthmother.  Since they were older, we kept their names upon adoption.  Our younger three are as follows….

Riley (Brave) Ann (favor, grace) – Riley’s just a name we liked and Ann is after DH grandmother

Ruben (Behold, a son) James (Hebrew form of Jacob) – both biblical, note the spelling of Ruben is not like the sandwich 😉  DH also has an uncle named Reuben.  It took us 3 days to pick his name.  We wanted something strong.   I guess it’s also from a Kenny Rogers country song, but that’s not why we chose it.  

Levi (United, associated with Him, joined) Joseph (Increase, addition) Charlie (Free man, strong) – biblical, Riley and Ruben each picked a middle name, he also didn’t have a name until the day we left the hospital.  

I did a blog post regarding names earlier this summer before Levi was born.  You can find it here….

http://reflectionsfromdrywoodcreek.blogspot.com/2012/06/name-game.html

Blessings,

Melissa

I have been enjoying this… but have not contributed because our kids names are not online.  (Of course you know their online names are from the Radio alphabet.)

But – without disclosing the actual names – here are our name stories.   First off, my dh will not discuss at length baby names until we are at the hospital (while in labour, or after the baby comes….)   Sometimes I think it is so I will be more distracted… lol.

So here is Delta’s (9yo boy)’s info about his name:

His first name is after one of the current (modern) apostles of our church.  I wanted a scriptural name for him – but not something that might make him get beat up more… lol.   My dh suggested his name, and it was perfect.  His middle name is very common in both my family, and my husbands family genealogy… and for my side he is named after my brother, dad, granddad, and great granddad.  (That said – if my mom asks, it is just after my brother…..)    Oh, btw, before he was born, if anyone asked, our boys name was Wolfgang Qwiggly.  (or was it Quiggly Wolfgang?).   Strangley enough, I have grown to like the idea of Wolfgang for a middle name… lol.

Here is Echo (6yo girl’s) info

Again, my dh suggested her name – mainly because it sounds nice, but it is also scriptorially based.  I picked her middle name, which was my grandmother’s middle name.

Foxtrot (4yo girl’s) info

We had a name that we had discussed for a while with Echo’s birth – and my dh still liked it.  My problem with it is that it is a name that is pronounced in a couple of different ways, as well as spelled a couple of different ways, and I figured that would end up greatly annoying me.  We decided on a similar, but simpler name – with pretty much no variations on spelling or pronounciation.   My husband declared that her middle name would be the same as my name, and I didn’t argue about it.

As an intro to Golf’s name – I need to mention that all the older kids’ names have 2 syllables in them.  That includes my adult step-kids names.  2 syllable names seem to go really well with our last name, and ALL of them have 2 syllables in the first name.

Golf (2yo girl’s) info.

At the risk of the LDS readers here figuring out the name – I think I sort-of always knew Golf’s name.  There is an LDS fictional book/movie that is almost a cultural story in my generation about friends in heaven in the pre-existance who are going to be going to the same family.  There were 8 of them (if I remember right), and the one that would be the youngest in the family was worried that she would be forgotten, and would not get to come to the same family.  She would be the last in the family.  I just somehow have always been sure that for our family, this is that child, so to speak.  The name in the story just has always been very special to me, and this is the child it fits.  My husband doesn’t even really know the significance of the name….

Anyway – I did mention a few names I was considering while pregnant – and my adult step-kids and my husband (when told seperately) all said that this one name had too many syllables.    So we were at the hospital, and I was in labour.  My husband suggested the name that we had discussed for all the girls, along with the name he knew I wanted for the middle name – and I said it was too close to Foxtrot’s name.  He said “I don’t care”.   So after a few contractions, I suggested the names in the opposite order (the name I wanted, with the name he wanted for the middle name) – and he said it had too many syllables.  So I looked at him, and said “I don’t care”.   He blinked a few times – realized he had absolutely no come back (having just said it to me….) – and so she has the name I always felt was to be hers.  My dh did suggest a different middle name (that has no significance that I am aware of) – and that created her name.

btw – although we picked very traditional types of names, there were a few more modern type names I considered for a girl that I decided I couldn’t use.  I liked  Sky (or Skye), and I also liked Azure.    For a couple of moments, I thought that Azure Skye would be a nice name – until I realized that that was a big NOOOO because our last name starts with an S!