the name game

Thoughts for Thursday this week:
Baby Names!!! My all time favorite topic!

Here are my questions...
Do you like your name?
Was there a name growing up that you wished was yours?
Did you/do you have your kids' names picked out when you were like 12?
Did you actually use those names?
Is there a story behind your baby's name?
Do you still love the name as much as you did the day you named him/her and has it just always seemed like "their" name?

I think I've always liked my name. Well, other than the fact that growing up I had two other Heathers in my class for a few years. Weird, because as an adult I haven't known that many Heathers. I do however remember wishing I had a name with a nickname. I dreamed of being Jessica... I thought the flexibility of being a Jessica, a Jess or a Jessie would be awesome! LOL! I never had any nicknames growing up and I was always jealous of people with nicknames; either real "names" or made up personal ones.

As for naming babies, I loved the name Kaitlyn (with the nickname of Katy or Kate) in my early 20's. I was set on it. Until I didn't have kids for like 7 more years and then the name was way too popular. By then I had seen a dozen Kaitlyns go through my classrooms.
I was also in love (and still am) with the name Mason. I would still use it if I could. Unfortunately, Mason Morrison doesn't really work for me.


We didn't know the sexes of our kids before they were born. So we had a short list of both names going into the hospital. We really had a hard time narrowing it down and had no idea what we would end up with. We had the middle names picked out, but the first names waited until we "met" our baby. We thought for sure Kathryn (Katy) Joy was our first pick for Savannah... Savannah wasn't even on the list. But as much as I loved Katy, when I held her I just didn't feel sure about it. Out of the blue we said what about Savannah; I remembered liking Savannah at some point. And we realized we loved Savannah Joy.
She was a Savannah Joy from the beginning. I used her name all the time... her full name quite often. I just loved the way it sounded. And it was so her.

Sawyer wasn't actually named for almost 12 hours. We had a girl name ready to go (and Savannah is still convinced we are going to have a Miah some day), but we just could not agree on a boys name. We finally narrowed it down to Sawyer or Seth. We really liked Seth but Savannah pronounced it "death" at the time and we weren't thrilled with that. So Sawyer Isaac* it was. (Ryan thought it was hilarious that Savannah means "a treeless plain" and Sawyer means "woodcutter". Like Sawyer is the reason there are no trees on the Savannah. Yeah, that's my husband's sense of humor for you!)
But a few days after we came home, I started having second thoughts. I'm pretty sure it was just my weird hormonal stuff, but I was convinced we named him the wrong name. I kept thinking he looked like a Brody. And I really liked that name. I kept wanting to call him Brody and I had to stop and make myself remember it's Sawyer. And then a few days later I decided I *loved* the name Landon and I was thoroughly disappointed that I hadn't thought of that a week ago. This was actually a very big deal to me. I eventually got over it and now Sawyer is most definitely Sawyer. And I love the name. I love that it's unique, but still a normal name and not over the top with trying to be original. And I love it when Savannah calls him her "SawBuddy".

*The story behind their middle names, since you asked LOL, is as follows. When we got pregnant with Savannah I was not thrilled with the fact. We had only been married for two months when we found out and we had planned on waiting a few years. I was not excited; I was very much caught off guard, and upset and scared. I just wanted to be married for awhile, I didn't want to be a mom yet. A few days later, we were with our small group from church and when we had a little prayer time, we asked them (without telling them yet) to pray for a situation that we were stressed out about, unsure about and not thrilled about. We asked that the Lord would take away those feelings of being out of control, unhappy and uncertain, and replace them with Peace and most of all His Joy for the situation.
After praying together, we left that evening feeling much more at peace about it. And on the drive home, Ryan said to me, "I believe we are having a baby girl and we will name her Joy." As funny as it sounds, I understood at that moment that it was all meant to be. As the months went on, obviously our joy built. Hence whatever girl name we went with, we knew it would be matched with Joy. If Savannah ever knows it wasn't originally our intention for her to join our family at that time, she at least will also know that we were excited and waiting for the Joy that she would be to us.
Sawyer's middle name Isaac, means "laughter". Not only did we want to in some aspects match his name with the meaning of Joy behind Savannah's, but laughter is probably the most fitting name for this kid. Little did we know how perfect that would be. Or maybe he is "laughter" because we named him "laughter"?

Be sure and leave your thoughts! And I don't care how long your stories are, I love any and all conversation about baby names!!
And if you're posting your own Thoughts for Thursday, make a note of that in your comment so we can follow you over there! So far we've got Kasey, Emilie, Nic and Jessica...