Today at
Kelly's Korner Blog she is doing "Your Kids Names" through the Show Us Your Life series.
Growing up, I had to spell my first name AND last name every where I went. And to this day, I must spell my first name no matter what, if I want it spelled correctly. I love it and definitely prefer my spelling over the common one for my name, but it is completely annoying to have to spell it and never see it written correctly. I vowed my children would not have to spell their names. And I promptly married a man with a top 5 most common last name in America. lol
With my husband, Andy is his middle name and he commented to me early on that he wanted to call a child by their FIRST name only. Going by his middle name has caused some legal hiccups as well. And not only that, but his name is one of a VERY famous musical artist and it gets old with all the jokes and comments. I just laugh along and say I married him for his money. lol
I had always dreamed of having 2 girls and had tons of girl names I loved. I grew up with only a sister and just never considered for a moment I'd have a son. Let alone 2. So to my surprise, we had to agree on 2 boy names. lol
When pregnant with our first, we struggled to find a name we both liked. We did not find out what we were having ahead of time. This was 21 years ago, but my memory is that my favorite names were:
Holden
Forrest
Garrett
He was much more into "normal" names if I recall. Hubs liked Benjamin Matthew, but another family member pointed out his initials would be BM and that was not cool. (That family member's initial were very inappropriate when used just the two of them, so I understand his point.) For a girl, we both liked Elise and Brooke.
I remember calling my mom and telling her if it was a boy his name would be Jordan and she said "What would you call him?" I was like, mmmmkkkk, lol, so that became his middle name. Jordan quickly became a popular girl name in his class, so I was glad we changed that!
Ryan Jordan was born that year and we loved his name for about one month. Until we realized EVERY ONE ELSE was naming their child Ryan. Ugh. I did consider changing it, but could not get the hubs to agree. To this day, I wish we had picked a more unique name. His name is so common that even in the category of golf, there are quire a few HIS AGE with the exact same names in the US right now playing golf in college. ACK! Note to self: With a super common last name, choose wisely on first names.
When we found out we were pregnant again with another son, we wanted another 4 letter first name, but more unique. But not weird. You know, the perfect combination? lol I wanted to put a full court press out on Holden (another character from ATWT) but that violated the 4-letter rule, so we fairly easily agreed on Holt. We LOVED that name and so did everyone else.
His middle name would be named after a favorite soap opera character, Phillip Chancellor. lol Holt Phillip came late that summer.
It is such an uncommon name and if one doesn't strongly enunciate the "t" at the end, almost everyone "hears" Hope. Or Colt. My poor 2nd son spells his name everywhere he goes, just like I vowed NOT to do to my children. lol But he is a Holt through and through and we get excited when we see someone name their child that. I think there are now 10 people in America with that name. LMBO
We did try to have more children, and as time went on, we settled on another boy first name - Camden. LOVE that name! Alas, never got to use it.
Looking back, we did consider family names, but nothing jumped out at us. I'm not sure we would change anything going back. Should we have ever been blessed with a girl, the last name we agreed on was Avery Elizabeth, but I'm sure that would have changed. We're talking 21 and almost 18 years ago!!
Have a glorious day!
