The Name Game

Tonight, dear reader, I pose to a question that is running rampant through the Hadley household as we are three weeks away from welcoming baby number 4 into our family. 

What's in a name?

For the most part I tend to keep expectations low.  This, as has been noted regularly in this blog, has been a very lucrative attitude for me over the years.

But, all bets are off when it comes to naming my offspring.  See, each of my children has been given their name for a very specific and sentimental reason.

Eliana Mae - It took us several years to get her here.  Eliana means "God has answered", which he did after 3 years of struggles.  And Mae is the middle name of two of her great-grandmothers and one great-great-grandmother whom were amazing women.

Cadence Marie - Hubs is a drummer.  He specifically chose her name to remind him of his love for music and a good "cadence" when playing his beloved instrument.  Marie is my middle name and also my mother's middle name.  Another passing down of names.

Joel Steven - Joel was born father's day weekend and his name is a combo of my dad and my father-in-law's names.  Joseph and Lowell squished together = Joel.  Steven is Hubs's name.  Three great men who love him and will be great examples and friends to him throughout his life.  He carries a great name. 

And now, number four.  How is a girl supposed to come up with a name story for this little guy?  All year long he'll hear tales on birthdays of how we came up with names for his older siblings and then we'll get to him in the last month of the year and he'll get a big... well, huh.  We just drew a name out of a hat.  {sniffle}.  Poor little bugaboo.

He was a surprise, so should we name him Shocker or Whoopsie?  Perhaps we could name him for the birth control pill that failed - Loestrin Hadley has a nice ring.

How about Finito, Last or, my personal favorite, Gomer which means "completed". 

I've tossed around nature names to mimic my own:  Oakes, Brooks, Cypress, Ashton.  But no dice.  Nothing is sticking.

Then, we stumbled upon a fun idea.  While gazing at our stockings hanging by the fire - each stocking has the first letter of that person's name stitched on it - someone suggested we name the baby something comprised of the first letter of the names of our family members. 

S A E C J 

So, we've spent the past few days playing a version of scrabble with that idea in mind.  Who can come up with a name out of those five letters??

And, you know what, we've done it.  We have an idea. 

And most of you will probably hate the name.  And that's okay. 

Because we can tell him - if we do use it - that we wanted to let him know that from the day he was born he was loved by 5 people who will always be part of his life.  We'll give him our names, and our love, to carry with him always.

Sounds pretty cool to me.