Tagged, the name game

Renee tagged all her blog readers in the name game; we have to tell the story of how our children got their names.

It’s funny; we were talking about this at Julia’s birthday dinner Tuesday.

When we were expecting our oldest, I was thinking about names all the time, circumstances led to me being alone during my pregnancy with no one to bounce names off of. So I chose the name Joshua Alan for a boy, and honestly, I cannot even remember the girls name any longer. At the end of my pregnancy, Tom asked if we could name the baby after his best friend if it was a boy. So Joshua left and Frederick Alan entered. Fred after Tom’s best friend, Alan after my brother Jeff, who’s middle name is Alan. When he and his wife had their first son, guess what they named him? Yep, Joshua Alan! Jeff swears he did not remember that we were going to call Fred Josh, lol! Fred was 7 pounds 7 ounces and was born in 1977. He was the beginning of a trend with the #7.

2/12 years later we were expecting again, at the time I was reading a fantasy book by Terry Brooks, I thought Terrance sounded like the perfect name for the baby I was carrying; I played with a lot of middle names and finally came up with Christopher. We considered Emily for a girl. Later my sister had a girl, (she has 9 girls) and she named her Emily. Terry was born on 7-7.

Nearly 3 years later, our third baby was due, looking through the baby names book, I saw the name Eric, I had a very dear friend named Eric, and I asked Tom what he thought, he liked the named Eric too. We both agreed that Michael sounded great as a middle name, so his name was chosen. We were going to name our daughter Rebecca Joy and call her Becky. My brother later named his daughter 2nd daughter Rebecca and we were learned not to share names with family! Eric was born on 2-7.

4 years later we were expecting again, everyone was convinced this baby was a girl, no way could we have 4 sons in a row. We even got little pink dresses for her, but she was a he. At the time of my pregnancy, I worked with 4 Brian’s, and I thought it was a good name, Tom agreed, the middle name, Edward, was after my paternal grandfathers middle name. Brian was going to be Gabrielle Marie if he were a girl, no one else chose that name, because we never told anyone about it! LOL He was born on 7-27

6 years later, we were expecting again, at that point we thought we would have just the 4 boys, we gave all the baby things away, and we had nothing for a baby. The ultrasound showed that this baby was a girl, we celebrated, and Tom remained cautiously optimistic; he would only believe it when she was born. The name Julia kept popping up when I was thinking of names, you should have figured out by now that I chose the kids names and Tom either agreed or disagreed and I searched again. He and I had a very good friend in high school named Julie, but I liked Julia better, at the time Julia Roberts was really popular and her name was everywhere. Her middle name was after my dearest friend, Elizabeth, who I call Becky, not sure why she was called Becky! No boy’s names were picked. Julia arrived on 10-7.

8 years after Julia, we got the news that no, I was not anemic (I was extremely fatigued), I was pregnant, and we were both amazed and pretty happy, hoping for that second girl. The ultrasound showed she was a girl! We were in the same boat as before; absolutely nothing left for a baby, 8 years is a long time between children. I had many vivid dreams when I was expecting Meghan (all of my children actually), many of them a warning of some kind, telling me that something was wrong, and that this child, this daughter, would change the course of our lives. Tom was worried; I had those dreams so often, and often my dreams came true. In one of them, a sweet little cherub told me that my baby girl should be called Meghan. I woke up and told Tom, how does Meghan sound, he said he liked it. We decided on the original spelling of her name, not the way most folks spell it, Megan. At the time I had a good friend who was called Meg on-line (her real name is Linda) and another Heaven Leigh (also an on-line name, she is Laura!) Coincidentally, Meghan is in essence named after both of their on-line names! Meghan Leigh! I am pretty certain that talking to them daily set those names in my subconscious! Meghan was not born on the 7th of the month, but her birth month, day and year, all add up to 7! 12-11-2000

Oh, and those dreams I had, well Meghan did change the course of our lives, but for the better! She was the reason we decided to adopt our last two children!

Naming a child who already has been given a name by someone else is hard. You struggle because they have been called that name for 3 years (or longer). If you followed our adoption journey to Ukraine, you know about the twists and turns, we did not adopt either of the little girls we first set out to bring home, thankfully both are in loving families. When we met little Karina for the first time, we were told, we just had a few days to think of a name for her. I sat down in that little room in Vorzel and wrote out a lot of names; I did not want to call her Karina, Tom was on the fence. I finally wrote out Kara Irina, in essence her name, and I love the name Kara. I showed Tom and he liked it. Karina became Kara Irina. I like her middle name; it says something about where she is from. Kara was born 11-28, but hey, 28 is divisible by 7!

Now everyone knew our Estonian sweetheart by Kristel, but since I am Kristine, I did not want to have two of us here with similar names. I always wanted to name a little girl after my paternal grandmother, Amanda, and I thought, we would keep Kristel as the middle name. Instead of Kristel, she would be Kristelle. We had to choose her name before we left for Ukraine, I believe she was called Amanda in the orphanage in the subsequent months, because she would not look up when we called her Kristel at all, but she did when we called her Amanda. She was Amanda from the moment we met her. Somehow, when they filled out her court records, they dropped the “e” at the end of Kristelle, so she is now Amanda Kristell, we did not want it changed, and it was OK either way. Amanda is like me, nothing with a 7 in her birthday, 3-26; though Tom points out the numbers in 2005 add up to 7!

7 is our lucky family number, even though there are 10 of us now! We had no rhyme or reason in the naming of our children; we went with names that felt right for the baby at the time.

Now it is your turn!