My mother-in-law decided to make a scrapbook about the names of her grandchildren. Now that baby Simon has made his appearance, there are 7 grandchildren. She sent me a text asking me how we picked the names of our children (um, how did we come up with those?) so I sat down and wrote it out. I'm copying it here to our blog.
Why did we pick the names? To start off- my name has been misspelled and mispronounced my whole life. It bothers me on occasion. I wanted the girls to have more traditional names, and we also liked the idea of using names from family members for middle names.
Emma Christine- We poured over baby name books. Ryan and I both came up with a list of names, and paired them with a longer list of middle names. Emma felt right and we decided to give her my middle name. (Of course this was when we figured Ryan would get his chance to pass along his middle name too. Who only has only girls anyway?)
Elizabeth Amy- Before we even knew we were expecting her, Ryan said he liked the name Elizabeth, and Elizabeth she stayed. Ryan thought he would like to use his Grandma Amy's name as Elizabeth's middle name. They must have been awesome names because both of her girl cousins share those two names- Megan ELIZABETH and AMY Frances.
The twins- who would have guessed we'd have to come up with two more sets of girl names? We felt like we'd already used our favorite girl names and it was back to the baby name book. A few people suggested we stay with the "E" names, but the fact that Emma and Elizabeth both started with an E was a coincidence. Besides, we were not super fond of Edith and Ethel. Ryan and I threw around a few suggestions- they could rhyme or start with the same letter as the other but do they really want to grow up as Chloe and Zoe, or Kaylie and Kylie?
Anne was a name we thought about using as Elizabeth's middle name, so it was brought back as a first name (I agree with Anne of Green Gables that "Anne" should have an "e") and I thought "Annie" sounded like a good little girl name. What name would go well with "Annie"? Something that didn't rhyme per se, but would end with an "ie"? Maddie.
So then we had an Anne and a Madeline who needed middle names. We gave Annie her grandma's name (Kathryn), and Maddie her great-grandmother's middle name (Rae).
1 comment:
That is sweet. Thanks for sharing. When I was little I thought it would be easy (and fun) to pick baby names, but it has been an agonizing process each time. :)
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