What other names were you considering for your children? I love hearing these. I don't know why, but there's something so fun about learning what you could have been. The other name my parents were considering for me? Ariel Dawn.
Thank you, Mom & Dad, for sticking with your guns and naming me Chelsea Diane. Because Ariel? I would have been tortured come Little Mermaid.
My kids had several names in consideration. For Ben, the top runners were:
Kingston Allan (although this was my favorite, hubby NEVER would have gone for it and I'm kind of glad in hindsight)
Parker Allan
Leo Benjamin (this was the other name we took to the hospital, but the second he was born we knew he was not a Leo)
Benjamin Allan (obviously)
Adalyn was going to be:
Alexis Mae (called Lexie - this was pretty much her decided-upon name until about a month before she was born)
Lola Mae
Charlotte Grace
Juliette Grace
Adalyn Mae
(If she was a he, it was pretty much decided that she would be Levi because it was the only boy name left that we both liked, though I would have pushed HARD for Silas because it's my favorite boy name now.)
We narrowed it down to Lola and Adalyn a few hours before she was born and then we sat there with her on my chest for an hour before naming her. We went back and forth between Lola and Adalyn a million times. In the end, I got the final say and chose Adalyn because I thought Tim liked it more. A month after she was born I confessed to Tim that I regretted not naming her Lola, and he told me it was his favorite. I remember spending a good two or three weeks after that trying to find a way we could change her name to Lola without coming off as straight-up CRAZY, but in the end she was Adalyn and now I can't imagine her as anything but. My sweet little Addie Bear. :)
PS - I suppose now is as good a time as any to explain her name. Once upon a time, before Adalyn was a twinkle in my eye, a girl on a message board I'm part of (Dec 2008 babies) named her daughter Adeline. For some reason, I always pronounced this "Add-ah-lynn." One day, many, many months later, someone asked her how she pronounced her daughter's name. She responded with the logical answer, "Add-ah-LINE." Right. But when I got to really thinking about it, I thought "Add-ah-LYNN" was a pretty name, too. Hence, Adalyn. I didn't love the spelling. Well, still don't love the spelling. But I didn't want to spell it Adeline and have her name mispronounced all her life and I didn't love Adalynn, so she became Adalyn. And I love it now. It's TOTALLY her. Mae came from both my grandma and my hubby's grandma's middle names. Rewind to Ben: his middle name, Allan, is a combination of my dad's middle name (Alan) and hubby's dad's first name (Allen). So it was only fitting that once we found out both my grandma AND his grandma's middle name was Mae, our daughter would share that. :)
The boys would have been Hazel Adeline and Charlotte Lucille if they had been girls. Judah would have been Emmanuelle if he had been a girl. We pretty much get right down to it with names. If we have another and it's a boy it'll be Gabriel James. I *really* love it, but it might drive me crazy that it's 3 syllables vs. 2...that sounds crazy!
ReplyDeleteI think almost everyone misprounces Charis, but we knew we liked it. Her middle name, Janelle, was the only one we found that seemed to fit between Charis and Rose. It turns out, also, that Charis is a New Testament Greek word for grace, and Janelle means "God is gracious." Once we found that out, we were sold.
ReplyDeleteIf she had been a boy, her name would have been Josiah Nathanael.
My little brother's girlfriends name is Ashlynn and I think it is so beautiful! Avan would have been Ethan, if dad would have gotten his way, and if he was a girl he would have been Madeline Grace (which would translate a meaning of 'tower of grace'). For me, it's all about what the full name means.... I'm weird like that. But I've decided that if we have a girl next I want her name to start with an S. So I'm leaning towards Scarlet, Sloan, Stella, Sadie, and Sami. We'll see.... ;)
ReplyDeleteIf I had been a boy, my name would have been Mark. The other girl name my parents were tossing around for me was Beth, but they ended up giving me the middle name Elizabeth.
ReplyDeleteJon would have been April. :)
Our second-choice name for Will was Henry. It's a family name on Jon's side, plus I just like classic names.
If Will had been a girl, we would have had a tougher discussion in store in the hospital. There were a bunch of names we liked, but we didn't have them put into a final combination. The first name probably would have been Amelia or Lainey. I liked Rose for a middle name (my MIL is Rosann) or Laine if we decided not to use Lainey.
P.S. My mom's name is Elaine--hence the Lainey/Laine theme. :) I also thought about Elen as a derivative of my grandma's name, Helen.
ReplyDeleteFuN! Top contenders 'round here for Stella were Scarlet and Juliet.
ReplyDeleteFor Bee, we thought about Daphne, Roxie, Scarlet, Audrey . . . hmm, drawing a blank, but i know there were more.
Of course you know all this already, haha.