Thursday, October 14, 2010

kaffee klatsch + naming babies

cafe latte

kaffee•klatsch (kä′fā kläc̸h′, kô′fē klac̸h′)
noun
an informal gathering for drinking coffee and talking


thursday mornings are one of the highlights of my week.
i wake up early (like before 6am early)
get ready  and hurry out the door to meet Judy for our weekly kaffee-klatsch.

i don't know where i first heard this term but i loved it and jotted
it down for a future post.
It fit so well with our ritual. That is exactly what we do, sip coffee
(or tea) while waking up, and chat.

Today we chatted about baby names.
We just started reading Matthew and it starts with the chronology of Jesus.
She asked how has being a mother changed the way I read the story of
Jesus’ birth.
I told her I read the usual “boring” chronology with boy names on my mind.
The options were less than ideal.

Then she googled “distinctive boy names” on her laptop
and we laughed as we threw trendy options around.
The site we found broke names down by trendy, unisex, metrosexual and country.
My brother in law’s name was on the country list.
Many names on the lists have already been taken by family and friends.

We have a name in the running.
We have both liked it since before we were planning to adopt.
We liked it as a boy name or a girl name.
I still love it. Curtis is unsure.
He’s taking this whole give-your-child-a-name thing rather seriously.
Maybe I’m just being too carefree about it.

I just have a hunch that it’s the name of this little guy.
My first motherly hunch was right,
We’ll just have to wait and see if this one will be as well.

This morning, from the shower, Curtis was telling me how he’s going to
start testing the name out
To see if it “fits”
I don’t like the idea of trial runs of names

“You’re going to confuse him.” I responded from the other room.

He disagreed.

In my mind I don’t want to start calling him by a name until we’re
certain of it.
I want to decide on a name and then name him. No turning back.

There is no test-run with parenthood.
There should be no test-runs with naming either.

*How did you decide on your child(ren)’s name? Family name? Name
books? Dreams? Last minute decision in the delivery room?
I’d like to know.

7 comments:

www.thecrazydaisies.wordpress.com said...

1. Kylie was the only name we agreed on. I knew OF a girl in college named Kylee and she was super cute. (of course the name then became super popular AFTER I named her... ugh)

2. Luke was one my husband mentioned, based on Lucas from One Tree Hill and I said "eh". Then I said later, "You know, I kind of like Luke." and he said "eh." I'm like "WHAT?! YOU picked it!" So I started referring to the baby as Luke and then we couldn't think of him as anything else.

3. We originally picked Emma, but our dog is Ella, so when we started saying it out loud, I was like "NO way!" And I was tired of super popular names, so wanted something different. I knew an Eliza years ago and always loved the name. My husband wasn't so keen on it. But after nothing really sticking, he came around (I knew he would!)

So actually, I'd have to say we picked the names based on "it just fits" or "It just feels right". Sometimes when you do say names out loud, it just doesn't "work". My husband's theory is he says the name pretending the name is being called over the loud speaker on a ball/athletic field. lol. I did search those baby books (online) feverishly though.

Rona said...

Mark and I both read and LOVED the book "Jonathan Livingston Seagull".
We instantly agreed on Jonathan L. (Lewis instead of Livingstone). We still love the name............and our boy too!

Amie said...

We were living in Boston and were engaged. We had been dating a really long time and new we didn't want to wait a very long time to start trying to have children once we were married. We were sitting on the beach and the topic of baby names came up. I am an art historian, and was currently working in an art museum. Scott was an English major and both of us were avid readers. So we started with a topic we loved- artists, authors and favorite literary characters....

We were throwing around name after name- some silly, some sweet, but it wasn't until Scott said "Jackson" (after Jackson Pollack) we both stopped. Silence. We said it again aloud, and knew it fit. It was the perfect name for us. We fell in love- and hard! Once we got pregnant we knew if we would have a boy that would be the name. A girls name was much harder. We finally decided on it and again fell in love hard. I am dying to use the name (if) we ever have a girl. But here we are pregnant again and again with a boy. Goodness was it a tough decision! After reading lots of baby name books we went back to looking at artists, authors, and literary characters and stumbled across "Owen". There were a few other names in the running we both agreed on. We both let it go and just lived with the 3-4 names in our heads for a while. I finally mentioned that I kept going back to the name Owen and Scott said that he was too. A few days later we decided Owen was the name for us, and our Littlest Man was officially named.

Now I just have to keep praying that no one uses our favorite girls name before we ever have her. And you know what- we never might! I will probably have all boys. lol.

~shannon~ said...

Levi- i'm pretty sure that was the first thing brian said when i told him i was pregnant. we both just KNEW he would be a boy. i honestly didn't like the name the whole pregnancy, but i knew brian was naming him after his grandfather who was a HUGE part of his life when he was alive...
so, i never once argued it. and the truth is...
i look at levi now, and he really couldn't be anything else, he is my levi!

alivia- levi got a "special" name being named after brian's grandpa, so i wanted there to be something "special" that our second child could say they were named after. when we found out she was a girl, i decided that her special thing could be brian's initials (brian's real name is anthony brian) so decided that she would be avery breann. and she was avery the entire pregnancy...
until...
i was literally in the delivery room right before she was born crying to brian that i loved the name "olivia" but i wanted her to have his initials. so he suggested Alivia, and two seconds later she was here. her name is actually alivia brian. :)

nataley- i thought nat was a boy, so i was caught off guard to find out she was a girl. we knew we wanted to call her aley, but i didn't like any of the typical names that could be shortened to aley. somewhere online i searched for names one night and found "natahlie" and LOVED it. so i thought if we called her natalie but spelled it nataley (plus i like words that end with y) we could nick name her aley. brian loved it, so that was the plan....
but here we are two years later and she's never once been called aley... she's just nataley. :)

happy picking!
and my theory is this...
whatever you name him, you will look at him one and think "that was the perfect name for you, you couldn't have been anything else, it just wouldn't have worked" :)

Marisa said...

Oh... baby naming was such an ordeal! :)

The big thing for us was name meaning. We wanted to name our child something with significance, either by simple definition or by our own experiences. I wanted our kid to have some weight behind his/her names... (we didn't find out the sex until the delivery room).

I started with the baby name books, circling all the names that fit my personal preference (for boys, I like short, masculine and biblical; for girls, I'm partial to names that invoke a sense of beauty, bonus if they are literary!)

Then we just narrowed it down to the ones whose meanings we loved the best. We played with them until we got a first name and middle name that we loved.

And, funny, we actually didn't have a girl name chosen. I spent my pregnancy convinced we were having a boy (you know how many boys are in my husband's family!) So when my water broke prematurely, that was one of the things we were freaking out about - we had no name if the baby ended up being a girl.

I refused to name Isaac until I saw him in my arms and spent time with him for awhile. Everyone was getting annoyed with us because we wouldn't commit to a name right away. We officially named him about 8 hours after he was born. :D

This reminds me that I've been wanting to blog about Isaac's middle name!

Veda Penick said...

My first "child" name came from an old TV western--Wagon Train. Doug McClure rode an appaloosa and was named Travis. i was 7 years old and decided then and there that my first son's name would be Travis. And it is.
My favorite book/movie is Gone with the Wind. I was 16 when I read the book and also decided right then and there that my first daughter's name would be Tara, and it is.
When I became pregnant for the 3rd time I was deep into a TV show--The Waltons. Stop laughing, I loved it. One of the characters on the show was Mary Alice. i liked her, she was strong, independent and pregnant, and her husband was away at war. She named her son Curtis. I cried during that episode, she was all alone--still strong and loving her new little baby boy. And so Curtis was the name I choose too.
I don't think I'd do it any differently, their names seem to fit. Maybe not as they see themselves, but as i see them...
Oh, and Jerry did have veto power over the names but fortunately it never came to that.

Tara said...

Let me just start with saying that I think I know the "hopeful" baby name and I vote for it...I LOVE it! I know full well that my vote does not count, but I just thought I would throw that out there! ;)

I am sure you have heard the story a million times about how Jack was supposed to be a girl...yada, yada, yada. Well, his girl name was Olivia Claire, from 20 weeks until 42 weeks. We had talked about Jack Lawrence for a boy, Jack for Dave's Dad and Lawrence for my Dad(middle name-Jack Jerry or vice-versa didn't sound so great).I however,am not a fan of one syllable first names, paired with one syllable last names, so I was very relieved when they told us we were having a girl!!! On the delivery table is where I found out that our "Olivia" was actually "Jack". Dave was so excited, I was not so happy. I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of looking at tiny newborn and calling him by such an "old man" name. Thankfully, it didn't really matter what his name was, we could have called him Buffalo and I would not have cared. I was just in love, he was my baby boy, and he was perfect. And as we all know, he is very much a Jack!!

Miss Sophia was going to be named Olivia, and since we had quite a few things embellished with that name, it seemed wasteful not to use it. But, everything changed when Grandma Penick died. I am sure you remember being over at Shelley's house after the Memorial service and she was passing out some heirlooms. She handed me a brooch that belonged to Grandma Penick's Grandmother. It was in a little blue box, and it had a little piece of paper attached to it. In my Grandma's handwriting, it read, Sophia Ross. That second, I knew that was going to be the name of my baby if it was a girl. So she was named Sophia Kathryn, after my Grandma Penick and my Grandma Burns. Thankfully, that name fit her perfectly!

I think it is funny how much pressure we put on ourselves to choose the perfect name. I remember having lists of names written out and saying them over and over..I had to make sure they were just right! But,it seems like no matter what we end up naming them, it just fits. And once again, not that it matters, but you know what name I am voting for! ;)

 
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