What's In a Name?

I just saw this idea on a friend's blog and decided that it would be a good thing to copycat (thanks Becky!).

  I don't know that I have ever written down the reasoning behind the names that we have given our children.  It hasn't been an easy road in choosing names that Chad and I agree on.  We have gone round and round with a few of them. 

I remember asking my mom when I was a little girl why they named me Kristen Marie.  Turns out, Kristen is a name somewhere back in my dad's genealogy and Marie was my grandmother's middle name.  She hated her first name (Emma) so she always went by Marie.  I don't know who started it, but to her grandkids she was always "Grandma Ree", most likely because someone had a hard time pronouncing it as a toddler and it stuck.

So here goes:

Blake Evans McGhie

Before I got pregnant for the first time, Chad and I were discussing names and he said that he liked the name Blake.  I had a really good friend when I was in the sixth grade named Blake and I had always liked it as well.  When we found out that our firstborn was a boy we were so excited!  Of course we immediately began discussing names and narrowed it down to Matthew Dean or Blake Evans.  We both really just liked the name Matthew and Dean is my dad's middle name.  We figured we would just wait to meet our little man and see which suited him better.  As they prepped me for a c-section after sixteen + hours of labor my doctor asked me what we had decided on for a name.  Chad and I looked at each other and I blurted out "Blake!", it just felt right.

Blake's middle name is special because Evans is Chad's middle name.  He is named after his mother's maiden name.  We thought it was nice to use a family name, and since Chad was extremely close to his Grandpa Evans while he was growing up, it was a nice little tribute.

Trevor Dean McGhie

When we found out that we were having another boy Chad kind of assumed we would use Matthew Dean, since we'd liked it so much the first go around but didn't end up using it.  While I still wanted to use Dean as a middle name, I just couldn't wrap my mind around using Matthew, even though it was still one of my favorite boy names.  I think that it was just too common a name where we lived at the time.  We have always tried to go for names that weren't in the top numbers on the popular baby name lists.  So we went back and forth for a few weeks and I started getting frantic to find something we agreed on, even though I was only about six months along.  I can only chalk this mania up to pregnancy hormones and stress, since Chad was travelling so much at that time he was only really home on the weekends.

One night I got on the Social Security website and started making a list of names that weren't too popular that I liked.  Chad came in and looked at my list and said that he wanted to add "Trevor" to the list.  I was not a fan.  We knew some people at the time who had a little boy named Trevor and he used to beat up on Blake, so just by association the name rubbed me the wrong way.  Over the next few days, however, it started to grow on me.  Ultimately I could see myself calling our new little guy "Trev".  It sounded masculine and strong, and I could tell by the strength of the beatings the kid was giving me from the inside that he needed a strong name. 

The funny thing was, when we told Chad's parents that we had decided to use Trevor, they were really excited because apparently they got very close to naming Chad that.  Small world huh? 

I have always loved the name "Dean", probably because I am a daddy's girl at heart and that is his middle name.  My paternal grandfather's name was Harold Dean, and I believe he went by Dean...and if he didn't I am sure I will be getting an email to correct me from my dad when he reads this!  We also really liked the thought of continuing with the trend of naming our kids after different sides of the family, so now my dad's side was taken care of.

Kade Smith McGhie

I am pretty sure I have blogged a little about our reasonings for Kade's name, but I will do it again for redundancy's sake.

Chad and I were both pretty surprised to find out that we were having another boy.  Chad had felt strongly all along that it would be a girl, and I just figured that he was right the first two times, why not go for round three? 

Early on in my pregnancy I told him that if it was a boy, I would somehow like to name him after Chad's paternal grandmother, Barbara Smith McGhie.  She told me from the very first time I met her (on Chad and my second date) to call her "Grandma"...she always made me feel like part of the family, even though at the time she didn't really know me or that I would eventually marry her grandson.  She was a very special lady and I feel honored to have known her.  A few years before we left California she was diagnosed with Alzheimers, so the last time we saw her she was in a nursing home. 

I think it is funny that when we were newly married and expecting Blake, the naming of our kids was a friendly discussion where Chad pretty much deferred to what I liked, but as we added more children, those discussions became more like negotiations and several times resulted in tears (from me, Chad's a rock...most of the time)!  Looking back, I blame hormones...and probably a little disappointment that we weren't getting to pick out a little girl's name like we had anticipated.  It is also a little funny that it took longer and longer each pregnancy to reach a truce!

We finally settled on Kaden when I was about eight months along and we were going to either use Luke or Smith as a middle name.  About a week before I went into labor I got all emotional one day and told Chad that I just couldn't use Kaden, it seemed too feminine with the letter K first.  He was surprisingly good about it and offered to compromise by shortening it to Kade, but still using the K first, he figured we would most likely have been shortening Kaden to Kade anyway, so it made sense to just name him that. That sat better with me so we then decided to go with Smith to honor Grandma McGhie.

Sophie Brielle McGhie

I know what you're thinking.

"So who is Sophie named after?"

Well.  Nobody.

We pretty much assumed all along that since the only branch of the tree that we hadn't represented yet was my mom's, we would naturally be looking to her genealogy for a name for our first (and only) girl.  Unfortunately, we just couldn't find anything that would work, and we didn't want to saddle the poor thing with something we didn't like just to fit the trend that we'd created.  I would have named her "Emrie", using the "Em" from my grandmother's "Emma" and the "Rie" from "Marie", but Chad just didn't like it, it sounded too much like the male "Emery" to him. 

We kicked around "Chloe" and "Zoey" (that's funny, they rhyme!) and Chad threw in his contributions of "Erica" and "Charity", but nothing stuck.  Everyone else threw in their opinions too, which made it a lot harder as we didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.  Finally my doctor gave me some great advice.  He said, "It is a lot easier for people to form a negative opinion about the name if you tell them long before the birth.  If you tell them for the first time as you present them with the baby, generally they will accept it and respect your choice." Thanks Dr. Chesney, you totally made me feel better that day!

I also came to the realization that, while it would have been nice to name her after my mom's family to continue our trend, there was no law anywhere saying we had to.  I still felt guilty until I realized that my sister, Jennifer, named one of her daughters Emma after my grandmother.  One of her other daughters is named Ashleigh, and has always said that the "leigh" part was after my mother, Cynthia Lea.  My other sister named her son Campbell, which is my mom's maiden name.  When I noticed that her family had been represented so many times I let go of the guilt and tried to find something I really loved.

Ultimately, Chad and I ended up going out on a date a week before I was scheduled for the c-section and during dinner we put my iTouch on the table between us and pulled up the baby naming app that allowed us to see names and their meanings and make a list of favorites.  We seriously considered naming her Faith for a while, but couldn't come up with anything we really liked with it for a middle name. Chad had been pushing for Sophie for a while, and during that dinner a sort of peace came over me when he said it.  I could imagine calling our little girl Sophie, it just seemed to fit.  It is spunky, yet feminine.  It means "wisdom".  Seemed like a good choice to me! 

I heard the name "Brielle" several years ago and thought it was very pretty.  I wanted something for her middle name that was not as common, as Sophie is pretty popular these days, even though it is ranked in the 60s for popularity.  Brielle is Celtic (or Hebrew, depending on where you look) and means "God is my might".  It also goes nicely with McGhie, and believe me, not many girl names do! 

So there you go.  

We put a lot of thought and feeling behind our childrens' names.  

Hopefully they don't hate them when they're older and decide to go by "Skull" or "Bubba"...

or "Prisoner #771"!