The Regular-Huge Announcement
It’s time for an announcement, the biggest announcement of the year. Well, it certainly isn’t bigger than the one about Ellie being pregnant with twins. It won’t be bigger than the announcement that the twins were born. It’s our third biggest announcement of the year? In the grand scheme of things, it’s still a pretty big announcement, right up there with the revelation that a congressional leader has been indicted. Twice.
We’ve decided on names for the twins. The first one born will be Ian Matthew, the second one Tory Sean, and dang was it tough to settle on those names. We heard from people who said things like, “You’re so lucky it’s twins, you get to name two babies.” I thought finding suitable names for two unborn children was one of the more difficult things I’ve ever done. Of course I’ve never actually given birth to a child, but finding names was still pretty hard. We wanted to find names that were unique yet conventional, distinctive yet common, abnormal yet normal. Obviously we had a difficult time finding suitable names.
We started with one middle name already determined, that of Matthew. My family assigns the father’s first name as the firstborn son’s middle name in a tradition going back generations; my middle name is my father’s first name, my father’s middle name is my grandfather’s first name, my grandfather I have no idea about, so we’ll make the tradition at least three generations old. It’s not like friends of ours who name the firstborn son “Wesley” in a tradition dating back centuries (their son is Wesley the tenth), but it’s more tradition than just giving your son a wacky name like Kal-El.
As we bounced names off each other, Tory was the first name we agreed upon. I can’t speak for Ellie, but I liked the way it ended in an “e” sound. My original dream was spell it with an “ie” at the end creating a running theme through all of our children’s’ names, but Ellie informed me that that would make it a girl’s name. I’m not sure she would have let me spell it with an “ie” anyway; she said it sounds like I’m trying too hard about many of the “-ie” names I bounced off her.
According to our baby names book, it’s an Americanized version of the Japanese word for “bird.” According to our baby names book, it’s also a girl’s name. While in the grocery store once I heard a mother yell for her little Tory (or Tori, or Torrie) to hurry up, and was very disheartened to see a four-year-old girl come running up to her. There’s a fairly popular baseball player named Tory (Torii to be exact) though, so I’m declaring it to be a boy name. It’s popular enough to show up near the bottom of Social Security’s 1000 most popular boy’s names in some of the past few years.
Ellie decreed that “Tory” and “Matthew” don’t work together as a first and middle name, so we were halfway to naming both boys. Ellie said her preferred name for the other boy was “Sean,” which never appealed very strongly to me (no “e” sound at the end). I pored through our baby book and bounced every “-ie” name I found off Ellie. Dustie. Kerrie. Mickie. She didn’t like any of them. She had good reason not to like them too.
While bouncing names I kept coming back to “Ian.” It was a little different, but not so different it would doom him to a lifetime of mispronunciations and misspellings from teachers and telemarketers. Ellie found the name acceptable. It didn’t end in an “e” sound, but it began with one, and I realized that was probably as close as I would get.
I liked “Ian,” Ellie liked “Sean.” We were both accepting but not excited about the other’s choice. Ellie, in danger of devoting so many brain cells to the name issue that it would start to push out important medical information, declared that she named Abbie by herself, so I need to name our last child by myself. “Do what you want” is what she said, which I interpret as wifespeak for “do what I want or face the consequences.” Consequences could range anywhere between refusal to yield the remote, to coming home one day to find a new bedroom set.
Faced with a choice between a name that I’m lukewarm about and a name that will be a lifetime reminder that I chose wrong name, I consulted the baby name book. Perhaps the names’ origins will give me a clue. It turns out, both names mean the same thing (God is good); they just have completely different geographic origins (Irish and Scottish).
Once I discovered they’re essentially the same name, I said the heck with it and tried a compromise; Ian would be one’s first name, Sean would be the other’s middle name. Ellie agreed without a hint that I would have to pay for it with stolen covers for the rest of my life. Now I have to get used to saying “these are our children: Abbie, Ian, and Tory.” And I have to pick a new name for the blog. At least I don’t have to worry about how we’re going to afford a new bedroom set.
We’ve decided on names for the twins. The first one born will be Ian Matthew, the second one Tory Sean, and dang was it tough to settle on those names. We heard from people who said things like, “You’re so lucky it’s twins, you get to name two babies.” I thought finding suitable names for two unborn children was one of the more difficult things I’ve ever done. Of course I’ve never actually given birth to a child, but finding names was still pretty hard. We wanted to find names that were unique yet conventional, distinctive yet common, abnormal yet normal. Obviously we had a difficult time finding suitable names.
We started with one middle name already determined, that of Matthew. My family assigns the father’s first name as the firstborn son’s middle name in a tradition going back generations; my middle name is my father’s first name, my father’s middle name is my grandfather’s first name, my grandfather I have no idea about, so we’ll make the tradition at least three generations old. It’s not like friends of ours who name the firstborn son “Wesley” in a tradition dating back centuries (their son is Wesley the tenth), but it’s more tradition than just giving your son a wacky name like Kal-El.
As we bounced names off each other, Tory was the first name we agreed upon. I can’t speak for Ellie, but I liked the way it ended in an “e” sound. My original dream was spell it with an “ie” at the end creating a running theme through all of our children’s’ names, but Ellie informed me that that would make it a girl’s name. I’m not sure she would have let me spell it with an “ie” anyway; she said it sounds like I’m trying too hard about many of the “-ie” names I bounced off her.
According to our baby names book, it’s an Americanized version of the Japanese word for “bird.” According to our baby names book, it’s also a girl’s name. While in the grocery store once I heard a mother yell for her little Tory (or Tori, or Torrie) to hurry up, and was very disheartened to see a four-year-old girl come running up to her. There’s a fairly popular baseball player named Tory (Torii to be exact) though, so I’m declaring it to be a boy name. It’s popular enough to show up near the bottom of Social Security’s 1000 most popular boy’s names in some of the past few years.
Ellie decreed that “Tory” and “Matthew” don’t work together as a first and middle name, so we were halfway to naming both boys. Ellie said her preferred name for the other boy was “Sean,” which never appealed very strongly to me (no “e” sound at the end). I pored through our baby book and bounced every “-ie” name I found off Ellie. Dustie. Kerrie. Mickie. She didn’t like any of them. She had good reason not to like them too.
While bouncing names I kept coming back to “Ian.” It was a little different, but not so different it would doom him to a lifetime of mispronunciations and misspellings from teachers and telemarketers. Ellie found the name acceptable. It didn’t end in an “e” sound, but it began with one, and I realized that was probably as close as I would get.
I liked “Ian,” Ellie liked “Sean.” We were both accepting but not excited about the other’s choice. Ellie, in danger of devoting so many brain cells to the name issue that it would start to push out important medical information, declared that she named Abbie by herself, so I need to name our last child by myself. “Do what you want” is what she said, which I interpret as wifespeak for “do what I want or face the consequences.” Consequences could range anywhere between refusal to yield the remote, to coming home one day to find a new bedroom set.
Faced with a choice between a name that I’m lukewarm about and a name that will be a lifetime reminder that I chose wrong name, I consulted the baby name book. Perhaps the names’ origins will give me a clue. It turns out, both names mean the same thing (God is good); they just have completely different geographic origins (Irish and Scottish).
Once I discovered they’re essentially the same name, I said the heck with it and tried a compromise; Ian would be one’s first name, Sean would be the other’s middle name. Ellie agreed without a hint that I would have to pay for it with stolen covers for the rest of my life. Now I have to get used to saying “these are our children: Abbie, Ian, and Tory.” And I have to pick a new name for the blog. At least I don’t have to worry about how we’re going to afford a new bedroom set.
posted by Matt at
10:08 PM
2 Comments:
Wow, I didn't know I had been such a terror about the names. I'll have to remember not to have the new bedroom set delivered right after we sign the birth certificates.
By
Anonymous, at 8:14 AM
Congrats on choosing names. It was THE. MOST. DIFFICULT. thing about expecting twins. My husband and I went rounds on it from the time we knew it was twins (December) until Mother's Day (May). We vetoed each other's choices on a daily basis. In the end, he chose Baylee and Brayden and I really liked them. Baylee's middle name is Michelle, which was my middle name before I dropped it upon marriage. Brayden's is Christopher, which is his father's name. I truly identify with how hard it was to compromise on two names.
By
Amy, at 3:03 PM
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