A Name, A Name

What's in a name?  How did you get your name?  How did you decide on your children's names?  Did it involve negotiation, bribery, creativity, and maybe even some cajoling on your part?

I have been making my way through Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Writing about her visit to Bali, she commented on how the Balinese usually named their children one of four names: Wayan, Made, Nyoman, and Ketut. You were named based on your birth order.

INGENIUS.  Oh, how simple that would make it.

Our daughters were given names that are on the top 10 list of the most popular names of the years in which they were born.

Not very creative of us, I know.

How did our daughters get their names?

BABY #1:With our first daughter, we didn't know her sex.  We were so confident we were having a boy, afterall, everyone said so...Everyone took blue plates rather than pink at my baby shower and strangers in the grocery store proclaimed it was a boy based on how I was carrying. We had picked out the baby's name based on my husband's family names and family lore: Hayden Joseph. After months of debate, the only girl's name we could agree on was Emily.

Maybe I should mention that it is probably good we had a girl since as I was pushing my husband announced that he didn't like the name Hayden.  HIS EXCUSE? He couldn't picture Hayden Joseph on a business card.  My ultimatum was he had until my next contraction to come up with a name.  He had literally seconds and choose Ryan Joseph. Of course we had a girl (even though there was some confusion at first).

BABY #2: Because I don't like surprises we found out the sex during my second pregnancy. If we thought naming our first daughter was hard it was impossible for the second.  The only name we could agree on was Madison and friends of ours were naming their daughter Madison (and were due several weeks before our daughter was due) so in my mind they had dibs on the name.  My husband kept bringing the name Madison up and the name kept popping up everywhere we went.  The people behind us at a baseball game calling "Madison, wait up" as their daughter ran ahead, that was the name of our server at a restaurant, friends suggesting the name, ...

Only weeks before my due date, my friend (who was naming her daughter Madison) was joking how we should name our baby Madison to and I confessed that that was the only name the two of us could agree on but I was NOT naming our daughter the same name as their daughter since they had dibs on the name.  My friend, bless her, laughed hysterically and said they would love to have us name our daughter Madison so our "Maddies" could grow up together.

Needless, to say we would have been fools not to name her Madison and to return to the difficult task of finding a name, enduring more disagreeing and arguing.

How did you come up with your children's names????