The Name Game

Oh, the name game. How crazy it's been. Especially when it comes to girl names and especially when it came to naming our 3rd baby. It was just a crazy, interesting dilemma for us for sure. There was actually a little stress involved. And possibly a teensy bit of arguing. Sad but true. My husband made me CRAZY with his lack of name "input". Then, he didn't like any of my name suggestions. Which I thought was sort of ridiculous considering he was contributing nothing. Ahem. Just had to get that out.

Moving on...

Garrison's name was really easy. We knew if we had a boy first we would name him Garrison. There was a chance he might be our one and only boy and we really wanted to use my maiden name. There had been other girls in the family interested in using Garrison so we snatched it up first. For a while there we considered Tyler as his middle name. We really liked the name plus he'd have the same first 2 initials as my dad which would be cool. But.... we had always, always loved Cade as a middle name... going way back to when I was 16 and saw and heard the name for the very first time. And, again, since there was a chance back then that Garrison could be our only boy we wanted to use Cade. So we did and it fits perfect. We call him Garrison Cade a lot.

When it came to a girl name for Garrison (obviously before we knew he was a boy) our favorites were Reagan and Ansley. We really liked them both but never really loved them both. The middle names were always Elizabeth or Grace... typical, popular girl middle names. I think we were leaning more towards Reagan as the time got closer to knowing if Garrison was a girl or boy, but again it wasn't our first true love or anything. We liked it a lot but never could decide if it was right for our daughter. It was a boy so that settled that.

Then came our pregnancy with Ausitn. We both sort of had a girl feeling with him so the girl name dilemma about drove us both crazy. We even had our parents and sisters vote on 3 different names we were considering. At one time we both loved the name Kaelyn... or Kaylen... or Kailyn...there's tons of ways to spell it. We thought it was sweet and a little unique and we both really liked it. Until it hit me that this particular name would constantly be misspelled and mispronounced. Constantly. Forever. And that made me start to doubt it until eventually I didn't really like it so much anymore.

We also liked the name Karianna after our sisters. Terrell's sister is named Kara and my sister is named Anna so it seemed pretty perfect. Except that it was sort of a mouthful and we never could decide if that name was "the one" or if it should maybe be a middle name... except our girl middle name all along for the second baby was going to be Carsyn after my father-in-law Carson... until we started to consider Austin for a girl which meant we'd need a really sweet, girly middle name. Ahhhhhhh. It was madness. The boy name all along by the way for a second baby boy was Austin Carson (after Terrell and his dad). But of course we needed a girl name ready to go because he was possibly a girl! Just craziness. But he was boy so case closed.

Okay, that brings me to our 3rd pregnancy. We really wanted a boy and girl name decided and determined so that when we did the gender reveal we could also officially announce the name. Cue the name game drama. Terrell still loved Kaelyn. I still didn't. I loved a few boy names. Terrell never would "commit". I wanted the name to end in N. (Both boys' names end in N and all the cousins on the Selph side have names that end in N). Terrell thought that was no big deal. I liked several girl names. Terrell shot them down. Blah, blah, blah. We made no progress for weeks.

Finally we narrowed our boy names down to Layton, Logan, and Landon. (I have no idea why they all start with L.) The middle name for a boy no matter what was Thomas. Thomas is my dad's middle name and both boys have family names so the 3rd baby would be no different. A family name had to be in there somewhere. We found out later that Terrell's great-granddad also had Thomas as a middle name and Thomas was my great-granddad's first name... which is who my dad is named after. So Thomas was perfect.

When it came to girl names we could not figure it out. We considered Camryn, Payton, Kilyn, and a few others but felt like they were all a little too masculine for a baby girl with 2 older brothers. It would (possibly) sound like we had 3 boys when we recited their names. I loved Emerson but Terrell thought that was too masculine as well. Finally we considered Lillian. Super girly, shouldn't be misspelled or mispronounced, not too common. Yep, it met our criteria. However, we weren't in love and confident about it. Sigh.

Then, there was the issue of the middle name. We wanted to use a family name for a girl too so we thought about Karianna but decided it didn't go as well as Grace. So we started wavering. Should it be Lillian Karianna or Lillian Grace? Should it be Lillian?? Gracious. We never made a final decision before finding out we're having a boy. So funny how all of our obsessing over girl names was never even necessary. Three times we obsessed. Three times for nothing. Ha! Which sort of makes perfect sense. We were just meant to have boys. =) God definitely has a sense of humor.

Okay, so back to the boy names. We finally ruled out Landon because a close family friend (Anna's best friend) has a nephew named Landon. So in the end, as much as we liked it, it felt taken already. Then we ruled out Logan because of not being totally confident about it, and the fact that I had a Logan in my class last year (adorable little boy) who I always pictured when we brought up Logan. So it didn't feel like our baby boy's name. Layton was one of those that just fit. It's sort of unique but not so much that it will constantly be misspelled or mispronoucned. It might occassionally, but not constantly-every-single-time. (Can you tell that's an issue for me? Terrell and I both have names that are butchered quite regularly.) And it just sounds great with Garrison and Austin. Garrison, Austin, and Layton. My boys. Layton Thomas Selph. Yes! It has a ring to it and sounds like us. It's official, it's settled, done-deal. Yay!

Finally! That took forever.

So there you have it. The long, boring yet drama-filled journey of the naming of our children. =)

I'm glad I recorded all this jumble of names and how and why we decided what. It's so crazy I'm sure I would've forgotten eventually. Yay for blogging and our family journal!