Category Archives: Reader Baby Name Stories

Reader Baby Name Story: The Calm After the Storm

Posted on
18
wave

Photo by dodsport via Flickr

Editor’s note: Over the years, I’ve realized that many readers are awaiting adoptions, struggling with infertility, or grieving a miscarriage.  I’m truly honored that Sara was willing to share her story here.  It is a powerful reminder that names aren’t just pleasing sounds – when you find the right name, it can carry layers of meaning.  I’m also truly thrilled because Sara was the very first reader to ever share a name story here at AppMtn.  You can read her son’s story here.

Our daughter’s name is Genevieve Pearl. She joins big brother Titus Whitfield.

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Reader Baby Name Story: Austin with a B

Posted on
6

BostonEditor’s note:  I’m so happy that Chantal is sharing her story!  It is a great example of how a name that doesn’t feel quite right at first can suddenly click.

When I was pregnant with my now 3 year old son, I knew from the day the stick turned pink that he was a boy. Finding a name for him was just as simple for me, but getting my husband to agree was a little bit of a different story …

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Reader Baby Name Story: A Tough Act to Follow

Posted on
10

 

Torin

Torin Michael

Editor’s Note: I don’t think there’s any bigger thrill than running the story of a younger sibling after the older sib’s tale has appeared here!  My thanks to Kristin for a little Christmas gift: her second son’s name story.  Read big brother’s here.

You featured my son Cashel Joseph’s name as a name story a while back… well, he now has a little brother and I thought I’d send you his name story, too!

When your first child’s name is Cashel, your second child’s name can’t really be Joe, or Sam.  When we found out we were expecting another little boy, we started talking names again and found it to be much more of a challenge than the first time!  For us, the perfect name is unusual, but easy to spell and pronounce, with some history and a good meaning.  This time around, it also had to fit well with Cashel’s name.  We didn’t want to repeat initials, so names starting with C, K (my husband and me) and D (last name) were out.  We also knew that if we were to have a girl, her name would start with an A, so those names were off the table, too.  In keeping with the tradition we’d started with Cashel, the middle name would be Michael, in honor of my father.  Now, just to find the right first name!

With Cashel, once I saw his name it just seemed so right that I didn’t need to look any further.  With this little boy, I spent hours and hours looking through websites and books to find inspiration, and it didn’t seem to come.  We’d previously talked about Graham, which I liked but which wasn’t “it” for this baby.  Ramsay was briefly discussed, especially since we live overseas right now and the Arabic Ramzi is a common boy’s name here… but not it.  Rainer was a longtime favorite of mine, but also didn’t quite seem right, although it stayed on the list for a while.

My husband was happy to let me pitch names to him, giving me a “good” or “eh” or “NO” response, but rarely loving a name.  Part of this is due to the fact that he is not a “name person” as he says, and would be happy with most names I found.  But that wasn’t enough for me – I wanted him to love a name as much as I did, and to feel like it was absolutely the one we wanted to use for our son.  One night as I was reading off a few possibilities, I came to Torin.  “Yes!” he said, “That’s a great name.”  This was by far the most enthusiastic he’d been about any of the names we’d talked about.  “There was an old computer game years ago called ‘Torin’s Passage.’  Very cool.”  So, this name had his vote, although I wasn’t completely sold yet.  But whenever I’d throw out another name or two, he would just say, “Okay.  But let’s go with Torin.”

I needed to have more than a ’90′s computer game behind it, so I did a bit more research.  I loved that it’s derived from the Gaelic word for Chieftan (or thunder, depending on which source you look at) – that tied in with Cashel’s Irish roots and my own heritage.  I also liked that when you google Torin you can get an Olympic skier, a swashbuckling British actor from the ’50′s, and an autobody parts company.  Definitely some manly associations there!  But what really pushed me over was the nickname Tor, which I love.  Especially with Cash as a nickname for Cashel – Cash and Tor, Cashel and Torin.  They sounded like brothers, and I could imagine them as athletes, or actors, or musicians, or just about anything else.  It’s pronounced like it looks, and spelled like it sounds.  And it worked beautifully with Michael – Torin Michael.  That was it – we had the name!  Both of us loved it, and Cashel even started referring to the baby as “Baby Torn, in Mommy’s tummy.”  Now that he’s here and we’ve had a few months to see how the name wears, I’d say we love it even more.  And it definitely fits our little boy!
Kristin, thank you so much for sharing!  They really do make a great pair – in a funny way, they’re both softer names for boys, but with a masculine edge.  And they’re both very modern and grounded in history at once.  Quite dashing!  I am now trying to figure out what your girl name could possibly be …

Baby Name of the Day: Tegfan

Posted on
11
Church of St Tegfan, Llandegfan

Church of Saint Tegfan; Image via Wikipedia

He’s Old King Cole’s pop, and an obscure saint, too.

Thanks to Gwen for suggesting her grandfather’s name as our Baby Name of the Day: Tegfan.

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Reader Baby Name Story: Dad Weighs In

Posted on
28

Note: I’m always excited to have a name story to share, but this one is different – the enthusiast is a dad!

My story is a little unusual right off the bat in that I’m a guy. I work with words for a living, and their meanings and histories have always fascinated me. So when I found out my wife was pregnant, I joined all kinds of online baby-name communities and began doing research. I found that I was one of very few men on most of the sites, but I was always welcomed wherever I went. It had simply never occurred to me till then that baby-naming was, or even should be, the exclusive province of moms. But the deeper I got into some of the sites I frequented, the more I discovered that (1) most men seem to either not have an interest in names or come up with lousy suggestions, and (2) a lot of women believe that since they’re the ones who have to carry the baby for nine months and go through the anguish of labor, they’ve earned the right to bestow a name on the baby, and the dad really doesn’t get much of a say in the matter. Fair enough, but I charged ahead anyway, and my wife was totally supportive. I think she got tired of all the baby-name test balloons I kept floating, but she always remained a good sport about it.

The first thing we both did was decide what kind of names we didn’t want to use:

  • Family names. We wanted our child to be his or her own person.
  • Bible names. No Matthew, Michael, Joshua, or Jacob. Just not our style. We’re not terribly religious people.
  • Anything too popular or trendy. This meant that Zoe fell of my list of likes fairly quickly.
  • Place names, virtue names, and occupation names. No Austin, no Charity, no Mason. However, I didn’t mind the name Alexandria, only because we lived in Alexandria, Virginia, for several years, so choosing that name would have at least had special significance for us.
  • Anything made up or misspelled. I don’t think “cre8ive” names do children any favors.
  • Gender-neutral names. We believed that a boy should have a name that’s clearly male, and a girl should have a name that’s clearly female. Is Hayden male or female? I have no idea. What about Skyler/Skylar? (I would have used Schuyler anyway.)
  • Boys’ names on a girl. That went not just for the likes of Aubrey and Ryan, but also for patronyms-as-first-names. I was not about to name a daughter Madison, MacKenzie, or anything else that means “son of [name].”

Eventually, my wife started showing interest in focusing on boys’ names — which was fine with me, because I was having a much easier time coming up with girls’ names. Her initial favorites were Trevor and Sebastian. But she eventually settled on Damian. I was a little concerned that it would sound too much like my name, Adrian — long A in the first syllable, long E sound in the second, “un” sound in the third syllable — and the boy and I would both come running when she called one of our names!

The middle name took a little longer to settle. Again, my wife took the lead and at first preferred Zarek. She came across the name in a book series by Sherrilyn Kenyon, and she liked the character by that name. But Zarek eventually gave way to something even more exotic: Abraxas. It was a name she’d come across when she was doing some fiction writing of her own and used it in her story. She liked its “magical” overtones. So Damian Abraxas it was.

My suggestions for boy names were:

  • Henry David, for Thoreau, my favorite author.
  • Alex Sawyer. My last name is Rush, and I happen to be a big fan of the band Rush. (It tends to catch wise guys off guard when they tease me about my name and ask me if I like the band, and I tell them, “As a matter of fact, I do!”) Alex would have been for Alex Lifeson, the band’s guitarist, and Sawyer would have been for “Tom Sawyer,” one of their best-known songs. Using Sawyer would have bent our prohibition on occupation names, but I had to make an exception in this case. How many Rush fans get to show off their fandom with their very own names?

I took the lead on the girl names, and I had no shortage of names that I really liked. The first was Lyra. I’m a fan of music and astronomy, and Lyra covers them both, as the musical lyre and Lyra the constellation. Lyra was also the name of the headstrong, clever young girl in the book series His Dark Materials, which I quite enjoyed. It also just happened that the band Rush name-dropped the constellation Lyra in one of their songs!

Then I drifted into Greek names, and I found a treasure trove of names I adored, from Zoe to Irene, Iris to Helen. The one name that jumped out at both me and my wife was Penelope. I loved the story of Odysseus’ wife, and we were both familiar with the name from having watched the TV show Criminal Minds, where the FBI techie is named Penelope. I thought it sounded quirky, old-fashioned, slightly refined, and a little bit British. Recognizable, but not overly common.

Penelope settled in as our middle name of choice. But what about the first name? For a while, I thought it would be nice to use a name that meant “peace” or “love,” so Irene and Carys both made appearances for a while. Those combos didn’t quite work for us, so we kept searching for something that sounded right, had a nice meaning, and wasn’t overly common.

Ultimately, it came down to three names:

  • Beatrix, the blessed traveler. Talk about quirky, old-fashioned, and British! I adored this name, and we even started telling people it was going to be our girl name. My wife liked it well enough, but she hated the thought of the nickname Trixie, which to her is all stripper/porn star. It just made me think of The Honeymooners, but then I’m weird.
  • Miranda, “worthy of admiration.” A Shakespeare invention. I liked this one, but it wasn’t at the top of my list. Can’t go wrong with a literary reference. The only strike against it for me was that as much as my wife didn’t like the nickname Trixie for Beatrix, I disliked Randy for Miranda.
  • Saoirse, “liberty.” I fell deeply, madly in love with Saoirse. Not only did it speak to my Irish heritage, but it also encapsulated the spirit of wonder, openness, and adventure that I hoped our girl’s childhood would be filled with. What better name for a child who you hope becomes a true free spirit? Unfortunately, after I got my wife on board with the name, I started to question whether I wanted to subject a child to a lifetime of having to spell and pronounce her name for everyone. That got my wife thinking about it as well, and by the time I’d come to peace with the name again, my wife’s misgivings remained. But she knew how much I loved it, so rather than tell me to forget about it, she simply agreed that if we were to have a girl, I could choose the name, while she’d choose the boy name. When I asked her what her choice for a girl would be if it were up to her, she said Miranda.

We wanted to know the sex of the baby ahead of time, but the baby had other plans. We had two ultrasounds, and the child refused to show us the goods both times! So we ended up painting the nursery yellow and buying neutral-colored clothes and just waited for the baby to show up.

The day arrived about three weeks ahead of the due date, only four days after my wife was full term. Labor went very quickly — so quickly, in fact, that our midwife almost didn’t make it in time! I got to catch our baby and make the call on the sex. It was a girl!

Now the pressure was on me to come up with a name. But when my wife asked me what the baby’s name would be, I didn’t hesitate for a second: She was Miranda Penelope. Somewhere during my wife’s labor, I let go of Saoirse. After seeing what my wife went through to bring our baby into the world, she got to pick whatever name she wanted — and I suddenly understood what all those women on the baby-naming sites meant when they said the woman earns the right to do so.

When it came down to it, the choice really was my wife’s to make — but at least I got to offer my input over the course of her pregnancy, and for that I’m grateful.

Now our daughter will just have to put up with my silly nickname for her: Miranda Penelope, for me, has become Mandy-Penny. I figure she’ll either love it or hate it when she gets older! Time will tell. But for now, I think it’s an adorable nickname for an adorable little girl.

Congratulations on your new daughter, and what a lovely, lovely name!  Readers, if you have a name story to share, you can submit it to appmtn (at) gmail (dot) com.

Reader Baby Name Story: Straight from the Family Tree

Posted on
6
[Tree in a rural area] (LOC)

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

Note:  I’m thrilled to share Cathryn’s story.  I think it is a great example of just knowing the right name – and sticking with it even when initial reaction is, er, mixed!

My husband and I decided on our son’s name before we were even married! We were talking about genealogy one night and he liked Thomas Grover from my side of the family while I liked Benton from his side. We thought Thomas Benton Grover would make a perfect name for our future son.

Over a year later we found out we were expecting. When we found out that we would be having a boy, we knew his name was Benton Grover. We dropped Thomas because neither of us had actually met anyone with three names other than their surname and we just weren’t sure how it would work. I’m glad we did though. Benton Grover fits my son perfectly and a lot of the time we call him by both names.

When we told our family what our baby’s name was my in-laws liked Benton, but weren’t thrilled with Grover. My parents didn’t like Benton because there’s a town named Benton close to where we live that’s not so great and they weren’t convinced with Grover either. My dad said he would just call him Ben.

Now that Benton Grover is here, I have not heard one person ever call him Ben and he’s 18 months old. The whole family loves his name because now they associate it with him and he has stolen all our hearts.

My husband and I chose the name because of the family connection. Benton is named for his great-great grandfather, Benton Bible and his great-great-great grandfather Grover Crisco. We also loved that neither name is close to being popular, but still very usable. Benton Grover fits my son to a T. We really couldn’t have chosen a better name if I do say so myself!

Cathryn, thanks so much for sharing!  I love that you put family significance ahead of trends.  But as a bonus, Benton Grover seems like a stylish choice, too.

Reader Baby Name Story: The Last-Minute Choice

Posted on
6
Letter T (Silver Spring, MD)

Letter T from takoma bibelot via Flickr

Editor’s note:  Long-time readers will recognize Fran from the many great Baby Names of the Day she’s suggested.  This is the story of her youngest child’s lovely name – and proof that narrowing down your list can be a nine-month process – or even longer! 

My youngest daughter is Matilda Winifred Jane, nicknamed Tilly. My older children are Genevieve “Neve“, Oliver “Ollie“, Tobias “Toby” and Lenora “Lena“.

Her name was literally a last minute decision, due to the fact that we could not agree on a name before hand! It wasn’t until we saw her, and my husband held her that he commented that she was a Matilda.

She was going to be Amelia or Amelie for months, so much so I was calling the bump Amy for what seemed like ages. Then she was going to be named Juliet until a friend had their baby, a surprise  girl, who was named Juliet. To her credit we didn’t tell her our choices, it just seems we were on the same wavelength!  Tilly was also nearly Penelope or Eugenie, both which just didn’t seem perfect enough.

I don’t know if we had as many criteria as we had with her older siblings, but we were looking for something that would fit with her brothers and sisters, plus a longer name with a cute nickname that was preferably useable on it’s own.

The whole family were involved in this, with suggestions ranging from Cordelia to Pepper! (In the extremely unlikely event we have another child at some point we now have an extensive list for girls)

The meaning didn’t really matter too much, but I do like the fact now that the name means “battle-mighty” according to my naming book. Even at 9 1/2 months old she certainly is a little fighter!

She’s the only daughter that I haven’t second-guessed her name in some way. Nobody has asked me to repeat, spell, or explain my choice – which has happened in the past.  If she meets another one when she starts school then it doesn’t matter because the name suits her so much. She is just an amazing Matilda!

Thanks so much for sharing, Fran.  Tilly is a great name – well worth all of the effort!

Reader Baby Name Story: The Poet’s Child

Posted on
9

Editor’s note: With apologies to Catherine, I was just sorting through my drafts folder and realizing that this has been waiting for weeks!  Here’s what I love about her story – it shows that even a familiar name can be rich with meaning.  You can purchase Catherine’s poetry anthologies online here.

What is your child’s name?

Stephanie Elizabeth, born 9/18/2001

When did you choose?

When I was pregnant. Her dad was due to be deployed on a submarine (half way through a 6 month deployment) at the time of  my due date (and she showed up 3 days before it!). SOMEONE kept her legs crossed during ultrasounds so we had to come up with a full girl’s name and a full boy’s name well in advance.

What were your criteria?

For a girl, it had to have a Stevie Nicks reference in there somewhere. She is one of my all time favourite artists. My initial choice was Stevie Rhiannon but my husband vetoed that one (ix-nay on Rhiannon and no daughter of HIS was going to be named Stevie). So, went back to the drawing board and decided that since we met through a medieval re-enactment society and had a French last name that we wanted our future daughter’s name to be bilingual English/French. At that point, he asked me what Stevie was short for. I answered Stephanie and he said “I can live with Stephanie”. Her middle name, Elizabeth, is a family name. In addition to it being my middle name, it is also my mother’s first name and my great-grandmother’s first name as well (since deceased). It was very important to me that she have a name that was “hers” for a first name. The meaning was also an important factor – “Light, Gift of God”.

Who was involved in the decision?

Just my husband.

What were the other options?

Madeleine was a contender for a girl and Aaron David for a boy.

Did the meaning matter?

The meaning was also an important factor – “Light, Gift of God”.  She was born a week after 9/11, with bright orange hair.

Did you second guess yourself?

She came out looking like a Stephanie!

Thanks so much for sharing, Catherine!  It’s a sweet story, and a terribly pretty name, too.

Reader Baby Name Story: She Picked Her Own Name

Posted on
11
Sasha LilyMy name is Courtney and this is the story about my daughter who is now eight months old.  Her name is Sasha Lily.

I had a girl’s name picked out years before I even got pregnant.Adelaide Helena. It’s so completely regal and seems like she could be a character in Canterbury Tales or a busty role-playing woman at the yearly Renaissance Festival. I was dead set and often found myself doodling the name Adelaide on pieces of paper absentmindedly. The boy name that I had picked out was Oscar Seamus, but that became irrelevant.

I found myself pregnant about three years before I was planning on trying to conceive a first child, and for the first few weeks, I thought of the baby as Adelaide. I tried it out with her last name, Adelaide Brown. It sounded good enough, but suddenly I couldn’t get past the ‘laide’ at the end of the sentence (it means ‘ugly’ in French.) Then I thought my boyfriend wouldn’t like it. Then I thought it sounded too weird. Then I didn’t think it sounded like my baby. Then I just plain didn’t like it at all.

So I went months without a baby name picked out. If you combined all of the hours that I spent on baby name websites reading and re-reading the top 1000 lists (I wouldn’t pick anything in the top 100 names for 2009), editing my favorites, asking questions on message boards, tossing and turning in bed trying out different combinations, trying to convince myself that Violet Brown didn’t sound too bad.. it would probably equal out to an entire week without sleeping.

My criteria were difficult to work with. Her last name, Brown, limited my first names to nothing with one syllable, nothing that is a noun, nothing that is a color, nothing that could be an adjective, nothing starting with B. As her middle name, I was dead set on Alanna to honor her late paternal grandfather, Alan, because I thought it would be extremely important to my boyfriend even though my grandmother, Glenda, had just passed away when I was about 20 weeks pregnant. I changed Alana to Alanna because the word ‘anal’ just stares at me whenever I look at the name. Alanna as a middle name also limited first names to nothing ending in ‘A.’ Between the no color/nature names, and nothing ending in ‘A,’ 3/4ths of my favorites list had been nixed before even consulting with my boyfriend.

Ultimately, I had narrowed down my list for first names when I was about, oh I don’t know, 9 months pregnant:

  • Ivy Alanna (I loved this so much!)
  • Noelle Alanna (Too much ‘L’)
  • Coralie Alanna (Boyfriend pronounced this as Cor-AL-lee.. nixed)
  • Juliette Alanna
  • Lorelei Alanna (also too much ‘L’)

Around the time that I was 36 weeks, my boyfriend suggested a name. “How about Lily?” I was horrified! I have always LOATHED and been disgusted with my first name because it is overly-cutesy, trendy, and over-popular.

Alas, the only two cents that baby daddy had to put in was suggesting a name in the exact popularity slot as my first name. Ugh. Besides that, Lily Alanna was just way too much ‘L’. I seem to have that problem a lot.

While half-way fuming about the only name he suggested and half-way trying to find a way to make it work somehow in her name, I googled lilies to see what they looked like. The first picture that popped up was a beautiful bright orange lily, my late-grandmother’s favorite color and coincidentally the same flower that I had picked off of her casket at her funeral before we buried her. It made me cry.

As I thought about it, all of the perks to the name Lily kept flowing. My 9-year old sister had suggested lily, my boyfriend had suggested lily, Lily is also a Harry Potter name, it’s a nature name, and it would balance out whatever crazy first name I eventually would pick, assuming my boyfriend would let me.

Lily became her middle name and a whole new universe of first names opened up to me! Mostly just names ending in a: Tabitha, Cora, Nora, Matilda, Alaia, Isla, Cambria, Leyna, Nona, Clara, it was mind-boggling. It was also mind boggling to my boyfriend why I couldn’t just picked a ‘regular’ name, as in something in the top 10 most popular.

I have never been a fan of the name Sasha on a girl, but for some reason it jumped out to me and for some reason I knew my boyfriend with his limited taste in names would approve it.

I never talked to him about the name and suddenly at 37 weeks my water broke and the baby was born that night. We sat in the hospital for 2 days without a name because I was too afraid of having Sasha rejected. I worked up the guts and surprisingly, we both agreed on it. Sasha Lily. It isn’t the kind of name that I would like at all. I wouldn’t have picked this. My boyfriend wouldn’t have picked this. I’m convinced that my baby named herself from the womb, because her name fits her to a ‘t!’

Afterwards, I did have name regret. I saw the looks on people’s faces when I announced her name and couldn’t stand the questions like, “So what made you decide on Sasha..?” I went back over my lists thinking about what I should have chosen. Something more common like Audrey, maybe Caroline. Something that actually fits my taste in names. I felt it necessary to add that I don’t really like her name when talking to people about names. I was embarrassed.

I’m finally warming up to it now though. Actually, I  love it now. The look on Sasha’s face when she answers to her name makes everything make sense. She picked her own name.

Thank you for sharing, Courtney!  You’ve done a great job of illustrating the differences between the names that we love, and the names that we actually use.  It can be surprising what a gap exists between the two!  And Sasha Lily is a great name – feminine and sparky, unexpected but not in an outlandish way.  And what a cutie!

Reader Baby Name Story: Valo June Reverie

Posted on
15
v11mex

v11mex by Too Far North via Flickr

Here’s the second from Kristen of Marginamia – the story of finding a name for Nona Plum’s little sister!

What is your child’s name?
Valo June Reverie (Sounds like the Val in Valentine, with an ‘o’ on the end.  We pronounce Reverie with only two syllables, rev REE.) We call her lots of things, mostly Valo June, but also Lo, and Vally Rev.

When did you choose?
We chose one week after the birth of the baby, and this time felt rushed.  It wasn’t as clear as (big sister) Nona’s name.  We went back and forth several times.  When we took her to the doctor for a check-up, I instinctively called “Valo, wake up!”  I think I knew then that this was her name.  My husband voted for it later the same day.

Once we’d finally decided on the first name, we had a tough time picking the middle: June or Reverie? We chose both, and I’m so glad we did.  We use all three of her names at different times.  So I say don’t be afraid to include those extra middle names!

What were your criteria?
We didn’t want anything that starts with N or ends in -uh or -ah, since her big sister is Nona.  We pretty much knew we wanted the name to end with -o.

I wanted her name to have some association with a number, like Nona’s, but I gave that up pretty early on.  I found out after naming her that Valo translates to the number 8 in Malagasy.  This is only made cooler by the fact that her sister’s name number is 9.  Oh, the nerdiness!

As with Nona’s name, we didn’t want anything totally made up, anything ending with en, in, or yn, and wanted a nature name, without it being too obvious. I do love botanical names (Azalea and Verbena are my current favorites) but we ended up with a less obvious nature name – unless you’re in Finland, then it’s pretty obvious for sure!

Who was involved in the decision?
Again, just my husband and me, though I did end up consulting some friends and my mother for their votes on our final three names. Valo June Reverie was the least popular amongst everyone, but it ended up winning our vote!

What were the other options?
Umi Luelle – Umi has various meanings but our most personal association is the one it shares with the ocean.  I just love the sound of Luelle.

Juniper Delphine – We love the sound of Juniper. Like June, it has that summery, syrupy feel.  Delphine’s rather mystical associations still fill me with glee, and we may revisit that name for a future child.

Verbena June/Verbena Louelle – My husband’s least favorite, and it ends with same sound as Nona, but I continue to love this name.

Meno Reverie – After Plato’s Meno. We didn’t want to name her after the character, Meno, but the book itself.  My husband and I met studying philosophy and share a love of Plato, and particularly the idea of knowledge being a sort of remembering, as is examined in the book.  And the name ends in -o … but  she just wasn’t a Meno.

Did the meaning matter?
Oh heck yes! Even more this time, I think. So, first things first, she was born with a giant stork mark directly in the center of her forehead, dark and giant. It was in the perfect shape of a V!  I have to say that this really influenced me, silly as it may seem.

Valo is Finnish for sunlight. Neither of us have any Finnish lineage, but I do have a strange love of many things Finnish, and find that little Finnish associations keep appearing in our lives all over the place.  The sunlight association is huge for me.  I awoke on a Friday morning in June to contractions five minutes apart, and they seemed to intensify with the rising sun.  Three hours later I gave birth to Valo in my bedroom. I just focused on the sunlight pouring into the room, right onto my face at times, and on a tree outside my window, shedding it’s white blooms in the wind – it was a crepe myrtle, which holds no name possibilities for me.

The sunlight seemed to bring her, and she was born right around the summer solstice, alongside the longest, most sunlit days of the year.

Aside from the name’s meaning, and aside from it’s starting with the same letter she had naturally tattooed on her forehead (which is almost completely faded now), it ends in ‘o’ and has those rolling ‘l’ sounds we love so much–check and check!  I found the name only about a week before she was born, so we didn’t have a lot of time to let it sit with us; I think this is why it took us a while to know.

We both love the name June. I actually didn’t want to use it at first because she *was* born in the month of June. Thankfully I decided not to let that keep us from using it.  We almost went with Jane, instead, a name I continue to completely adore, but we both liked the “oo” sound with Valo over the “ay” sound.

Reverie is a favorite word of ours. We both love the sound and meaning of it. It means ‘daydream.’  It also seemed to fit her. I spent a great portion of the pregnancy in a very dreamy state, as do a lot of pregnant women, I think. We had a lot of upheaval going on, and I coped by just zoning out and dreaming, likely even when I shouldn’t have, but it seemed to be something over which I had very little control. I associated the strength of that impulse with the particular little child in my womb!

I also dreamed about how she would enter the world. I wanted her to be born on a Friday morning because it’s my favorite day of the week, and (more importantly) we get a longer paternity leave for my husband with it starting on a weekend! I wanted to awake after a *full* night’s rest to an active labor and to have a very short labor. I wanted her to be born in our home. All of this dreaming and meditating was completely matched in reality when the time came, so again, I just felt like her little spirit shared this element of the pregnancy, like she was linked to all the dreaming.  My wish for her as I pondered her coming in the last few days of the pregnancy, and then as I stared down at her in those first few days after her birth was that she hold on to the dreaminess!  And boy, does this fit her!  The word also has musical associations. I also really love the simple French word for dream, Reve, as a first name, but my husband wasn’t into it. We use it, though; I call her Vally Reve quite a lot!

Did you second guess yourself?
Yes, I did. I even went through a week where I tried just calling her June, but then my husband said her name very casually and it struck me as being very musically beautiful.  I think I’d been sort of freaked out by not really having encountered it anywhere before, not even in a person online or anything; it felt sort of *too* alone, even though I knew it wasn’t a name we’d just made up.  Now each time I hear it, it brings me the joy of hearing something beautiful and perfectly meaningful for this little girl, so I know it’s a perfect fit for her!  I think a lot of my indecisiveness comes from being truly in love with so many names.

Hmmm,  I guess there might be a need for more sweet little babies to gift with some of those names!