Picking out names was fun. Picking out names was exciting. Picking out names, especially for our last child, was extremely hard! I was reminded of this just today as a friend of mine is still debating names for her now one day old baby. That was us. Well, actually he was two days old. When she sent a text with her list of names, it looked just like our list that I kept as an ever evolving "note" on my iphone. (My kids will probably read this many years from now and say "what's a note?" ... or "what's an iphone?" ha!)
With the other three, it was relatively easy. Madeline was Madeline Jane from the day we knew we were having a girl ... or two girls, actually. Annabel was a little harder. I think we finally decided on her name when I was about 7 months pregnant. The two top names throughout were Annabel Grace (my choice) or Abigail Grace (daddy's choice). I won that one. And James Franklin III was not negotiable. We always knew if/when we had a son, that would be his name. The debate was whether to call him James or Franklin ... or some other nickname ... and that debate lasted for a while. I think we decided on James about 3 weeks before he was born.
But with Elliot ... that was hard! I remember loving to hear my parents talk about what other names they almost named me. To think of myself as a "Natalie," "MIchelle" or "Rebecca" (I think those were three others they considered) just seemed so funny. I thought Elliot would one day get a big kick out of what he might have been named. Daddy and I had very different taste in names. And naming was made harder by the fact that we both have HUGE families with lots of cousins, so many of our favorite names were already taken.
So here it is, Elliot ... if daddy named you, you might have been Finn, Jude, Theo, Leo, or even Felix or Oscar. Daddy had a pretty eclectic list. If mommy had named you, you might have been a Calvin (my favorite through most of the pregnancy until the moment I saw you since the name "Calvin" means "bald" which you were NOT), Dawson, Owen, Wyatt, Nathan, Lucas or any of the other dozen names on my list. Or using John (a family name) as the first name and pairing it with one of the many names on my list. I had a hard time narrowing it down!! I think the top name choices when we went to the hospital were Calvin (my #1), Jude (probably daddy's #1), John Hardy (my grandfather's name), and Elliot (we both liked). And I will tell you that the minute they handed him to me, the first thought other than looking at all your hair was "he looks like an Elliot." It took me a full 48 hours of trying out other names on you to make it official though. You were an Elliot. Elliot Hardy to be exact. It was important to me to give you a family name too and means a lot to me to name you after my grandfather. He would approve! And even more fitting that you were born on my grandmother's birthday. I figured they were doing a little happy dance in Heaven when their 19th great-grandchild was born. "Elliot" means "The Lord is my God." Amen to that. And even though it took us so long to choose your name, I now love it. I cannot imagine you being anything other than our Elliot ... or "Elli-IT" as Annabel says and "Eh-yit" as James says.
I am proud of all of my kids' names ... I love my Madeline, Annabel, James and Elliot. Who would have ever thought I would get to choose FOUR baby names??!
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