When I was first married, I never really gave much thought to having children and becoming a mom, but when that did happen, I never realized much ahead of time that we would end up having to come up with so many names. So it became a quest.
The 4 girls' names have a nature theme in common, however accidentally that happened, but the only thing the boys have in common is that they don't have girl names. Maybe you could tie the first three together with a Biblical/Book of Mormon slant, but it would be a stretch to fit the fourth in that. Unless you figured "Wayne" was possibly the name of some prophet of one of the Lost Tribes, or say, one of the Gadianton robbers. Hmmm, guess it's best to just share the facts.
We were living in Germany when our first son was born. I had liked the name “Jay” for a long time because I had babysat as a teen for a family of 3 boys, the youngest of whom was an irrepressible toddler named Jay. He was a handful, capricious and unpredictable. It kept it fun to have to deal with his energetic personality. So I had fond memories and thought I'd like having a Jay of my own to chase after (I was a lot younger then). But Poppas wanted to name this baby just the initial “J” if it were a boy, because he thought it was cool that his own father's middle name was simply “H”. I wasn't ready to go along with just an initial for a first name, so we were stymied.
A few weeks before the baby was born, one of my former roommates from BYU sent me a letter telling me that she had married, just had her first child and had named him Adam. Botta Bing Botta Boom! Immediately I liked that--- it had dignity and class and wasn't a name that was very common then. Obviously it had been sent special delivery to us at exactly the right time. So I set out to steal it. And that I did; we named him Adam. And we were very happy.
Three years later, our second son was born. We still liked the J approach, but this time we chose Jared because that too just had more dignity than “J” or “Jay” for his grownup years and it seemed downright masculine. And we could use “J” for a nickname and have the best of both worlds. Then too it was a little unusual at the time, so it was a perfect choice for us. And we were very happy.
When we were expecting our 6th baby, I became obsessed with a hymn titled “I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked”, one of the most beautiful hymns I had ever heard. And one powerful line in that hymn goes, “ I saw the mighty Jordan”, that's the river where Jesus was baptized, and all I could think of was having a son who was literally Jordan--- flowing with might and goodness. My heart was set on it, so when he was born I revealed his name, having kept it my little secret till then. And we were very happy.
By the time our family was preparing for our 8th, and final, baby, we had checked out a lot of names through the years. I think I was leaning towards the name Blake or Ryker for a boy, but I don't think I got any support for those. Then about a month or two before the baby's due date, that little pistol in our family, Willow, noticed that somehow we had managed to have 2 “A”s, 2 “T”s, and 2 “J”s so far in our repertoire, and ONLY 1 W, amazingly enough! She absolutely insisted that the new baby had to be a “W”, and she was adamant. Relentless actually, though I couldn't find any "W" names I liked. She wouldn't back down and finally I decided on Whitney for a boy or a girl. “No, No---Not for a boy!” they all screamed. Can't fight City Hall.
It was getting closer and closer to the time for the baby to be born, and one night I had a dream, and it was clear that it would be perfect to name this baby Wayne, for his father. At first, Dad said not, because we had never liked the idea of “Jr.” for anyone, but he eventually relented because it was actually his middle name we were using. It was more than an appropriate choice because when this little baby boy was born, he was an exact duplicate, the “spitting image” of his Dad. And we were very, and finally completely, happy.
3 comments:
I much prefer the names Jerusalem and Whitney for your two younger boys. And why did you stop at only eight kids?
Jew wanna mention your preferences to them face to face? I dare you! (I'm kinda trusting you let your wife pick out your kids' names.)
Bill Cosby told people who asked him why he had 5 kids, "Because we didn't want 6." I think we stopped at eight because I wanted sixteen and my husband wanted two, so it became a mathematical solution. Of sorts. I would have liked another couple of head or so, I'm just an all out sucker for babies.
Your boys don't scare me! It's the girls who I find intimidating!
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