The Names

When planning for our fourth baby, we knew that if we had a boy, it would be tough to name him. We've already named three boys, after all, using a total of six names. We also have sort of a pattern we wanted to follow of using a family name for the middle name. So when we found out that Noah was indeed another boy, we got right to work to finalize our choice of his name. We also decided to keep this name a secret until he was born, as that is something I've always wanted to do. We've always known the sex of the baby ahead of time, and we know they're going to be big. With all but Alexander, we've even known their birthdays ahead of time. I wanted there to be some element of surprise in the birth announcement!

Alexander Matthew's name came from simply two names that we liked, Matthew being my brother's name. We later regretted using Matthew as Alexander's middle name only because we would have loved to use it for one of our other son's first names, but felt it was a little weird (for us) to do so. We wanted to call him Xander, which we did and still do. He has started to go by Alex at school. Maybe it's due to the great flow of his name, but he gets a lot of "Alexander Matthew!" when he's in trouble.

Jack was, again, just a name that we liked and could agree on. His middle name, Justin, is of course after his father. I sometimes call him JJ. People do sometimes ask if Jack is his real/full name or just a nickname. 

I've loved the name Kai for a while and I'm not sure how we made it to our third son before using the name. I had really wanted to use my mother's name, or a combination of my mom and Justin's mom's names (possibly Karelyn), if we had a girl. When we found out that wouldn't happen (and we thought Kai would be our last baby), I loved the idea of using a "K" name for our son, to honor my mom Karen. Kai's middle name is Damon, which is a sort of combination of both our fathers' names, David and Vernon.

For Noah, we weren't sure what to use as a middle name from the family because there really weren't any other men that we felt strongly about naming our child for. (Not to say there aren't tons of other men in our family that we love and respect!) Honestly, we weren't sure what to use for either name! Since Justin's name is used as Jack's middle name, we thought it might be fun to give our fourth son my initials, an "E A" name like Etan Andrew or Elijah Avery. In fact, at one point we "shook" on Elijah Avery being his name, but after a week or two we just didn't love it and didn't feel that it quite fit with the other boys' names. We decided to drop the idea of an "E A" name and just give him any first name that we liked and give him an "E" middle name for me (Elizabeth). Since he is named for me, we thought it was interesting that both of our nurses during his delivery were also named Elizabeth. We decided on Noah for his first name, which I've always liked. Noah means "peaceful." I ran across the name Everett while browsing through the "E" boys' names, and I really liked the sound of it and thought it went well with Noah. I also liked that it means "brave," which I thought offered a good balance with "peaceful." A little boy with three older brothers will need a little bravery!

I'd love to hear stories of how your kids were named! Blog it or leave the story in comments!