I have been thinking about names recently, not sure why, but I have. There is so much pressure when you name your child, so many people to please. You want to make sure that it fits with your last name, for instance our last name starts with D, so we couldn’t have a girl with a first name starting with D. I am sure it wouldn’t take much for a teenage boy to call her Double D, if it was appropriate or not. Next you want to make sure that it can’t turn into a funny nickname. Then there is the family pressure to carry on names and make sure both sides are represented appropriately. This doesn’t even take into account any ideas you as parents have.

For us we had a girls name locked for years before we even thought about kids. Unfortunately we never got to use Catherine Ann. Catherine after my grandma, Jim’s aunt and a good friend and Ann after Jim’s mom and sister. (We are giving it out to anyone who would like to use it since we will not get the chance.)

Boys names are so much harder. I think we both knew deep down we were going to have boys because we didn’t have our names figured out. With Jack, we both liked that name pretty quickly, but it took some time to be comfortable with Jackson. Once we decided on his first name the middle one was easy. Edward is Jim’s middle name too and they have the same initials (my dad and I had the same ones until I got married.) We made the mistake of throwing out Jack’s name during a brainstorming conversation with some family only to have it not liked. After that we decide no more, you will know the name when you meet the child.

With Will it was much harder. Neither of us liked the names we hadn’t chosen for Jack anymore, so we started from square one. (It was fun to go through the name books and read all the funny ones.) I wanted a name that was formal, but had a good short version, that way they could choose when they are older which name they would like to use. It wasn’t until about 10 days before he was born that we settled on William. His middle name, Stanton, is after my dad.

For Jackson, his short version was easy, Jack is really the only one that works. William on the other hand has so many variations (Will, Willie, Bill, Billy), however he is just Will or William. (Jack prefers to call him William.) Of course we have nicknames for both boys; Jack is Scooter and Will is Bug-a-boo. I know they will both be embarrassed by them later in life, but I am their mother and get that right.