On names...

Shay has taken part in the Show and Tell Tuesday blog challenge this week and since the prompt was so lovely I thought I'd share mine...

This week's idea was 'tell us how you picked your children's names, or how you got yours!'
Since my blog is anonymous this will be kinda tricky, but I'll try and convey what we were going for. I adore baby names and baby naming, it's probably my favourite part of being pregnant!

Basically, our family's names are strongly based around tradition and family members. We are big on honouring those who have helped mould our character, boost our spirits and encourage our personalities. Our parents followed this approach when they named both Husband and I (separately of course, without knowing one another, this isn't some hillbilly story of incest...) and Husband and I felt the same way when we started thinking of naming Toddler.

Husband is named after 3 family members. I can't really remember who, I only know that one of his names is after his father, but I know they were distant members of both families that meant a lot to his parents. (Mental note, ask Husband this, he will surely know??) I am named after my paternal grandmother, who my father adored, because I was born on her birthday. They then decided that they couldn't risk upsetting my maternal grandmother so that became my middle name!! My sister only has one Christian name which riles her to this day...my mother's response? We just didn't think of one for you!!

So, when it came to naming my children I had strong ideas. Unfortunately, and this happens a lot in our marriage, Husband also had strong ideas THAT WERE THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE TO MINE! I had always said that if we were carrying a boy then I would want to name him after my father, but once there was a real life person wiggling around inside who could potentially be a boy all these hundreds and thousands of names came pouring out of books all around me and I was swamped. I made list upon list upon list, most of which were instantly veto'ed bu Husband (he has weirdly strict baby-naming rules, some of which I'm convinced he makes up on the spot in order to veto whichever name it is I've just suggested...??) In the end, we decided on my father's name for a boy and Finley for a girl. I don't know why we decided on this, all I remember is that we were well and truly stumped for a girl's name, it ticked the 'unusual' box that I loved and I've always liked the name. Now I hate it for a girl. So good job we found out it was a boy. We had our gender scan, confirmed his name privately then called all our family into the room to introduce them officially on screen. It was perfect!!

Now, I have one middle name but Husband has two. So that was another row! But we finally settled on the name of the best man at our wedding. We felt this was a fitting role model for our son as well as a tribute to the friend who had stood by Husband on our wedding day and supported us so unequivocally when we separated the year before. A good 4 months after that, just before I was due to pop, Husband announced the second middle name which has military links but also links to our family Labrador. It's random, but I love what it stands for so I went with it.

When we found out we were expecting Baby, I had a girl name straight away. No questions asked, had it in my mind for months, this was IT. The boy name was a bit harder. We felt like we'd used the 'perfect, grade A, first choice name' with Toddler so how could we possibly choose another? I loved Rafferty and after weeks of arguing Husband finally let me have it. Then the night before our gender scan where we are due to meet our baby, name our baby and introduce our baby to family, he came home ashen-faced and announced he couldn't call his son Rafferty and that we would have to choose something else. (Apologies to any Mamas of Raffertys, I still adore it!)

Well, I hit the roof. He spent all night on the baby naming apps looking for alternatives and finally we had a shortlist of 3. It wasn't until we pulled up at the sonogram office the next day and Nana opened a baby name book infront of me that the decision became final...there on the page she had let the book fall open to naturally was option 1. That's how Baby got his name!

His middle names are after Husband's best golfing buddy and both of our paternal grandfathers (again, just fluke, we're genuinely not related!)

How did you name your little bundles of joy? Just a name you took a shine to or did you go with meaning?? I'm intrigued...