A Kid by Any Other Name

My mom asked me yesterday if I was running out of blog material. I told her, "No, I am not running out of blog material. I am just running out of GOOD blog material." And then I wondered if she was a tad bored by my blog lately. Hmph. (Mom...shouldn't you be watching some of my kids..........)



Anyway. I think my kids' names came in third on the votes so here goes.



Ty -

When I got pregnant with Ty I lived in a small town away from most of my friends and away from THE WORLD. I didn't realize everyone and their dog was naming their kids Tyler. But his name is NOT Tyler. It's Ty. I heard it when my then husband was watching a movie about Ty Cobb. We agreed not to ever mention Ty Cobb because he was not a nice man. Well I guess I just blew that promise.

It took me a few months to convince my family not to call him him Tyrone, but everyone is one board now. I can't imagine him being any other name. I mean really, does that kid fishing on the sidebar look like a Howard, or a Jonathan to you?



Tanner -

Once you name the first kid it is important that all the other names you choose for offspring "go together". I couldn't name one kid Ty and name the next one William. Nice name - doesn't go. Besides I had a friend who was very critical of every name I picked. Seriously she vetoed hundreds. (Did you know that Brodie means racing stripe in Oregon? Weird. )

If Tanner were a girl his name was going to be Riley. I picked his middle name to honor one of the best baseball players of all time, Nolan Ryan.

Mostly this name reminded my friends of the Tanner from Bad News Bears. I wonder if naming him this had an affect on his personality???? Thoughts?



Saige -

I love her name. I was looking for something different, but not too different. I had always like Lauren, but there were FOUR of them in Ty's class, so I had to change directions. This name was in a novel. We know one other Saige who, believe it or not was on her cheer leading team. And also another blogger has a beautiful daughter named Saige. I loved it that when Tayte started talking he called her GIGI because that is how he said Saigie.

I love her middle name too, but I catch crap for it. Her middle name is September. No, she was NOT born in September. I love September. It's when school used to start, and when it starts cooling off. It's fall. It's my birthday. And it sounds pretty. When she was a pre-schooler she had a doll baby she had named January and everyone thought that was just hilarious. Ha ha.

Tayte -

When I met The Coach he thought great kids' names were Cy and Sadie, and they are. But with a Ty and a Saige already I thought they were just too similar and therefore dashed all his future hopes and dreams. As for him, he believed there should be no names after colors, days of the week, or months which dashed all my dreams of naming a baby Saylor Gray.

When I got pregnant I was very concerned about the whole half brother/sister thing. I didn't want the kids to feel like they were separate families. My idea was that even though I hadn't intended to have kids with all T or S names I would name the fourth baby with a T or an S for cohesion. The Coach didn't think this idea was as great as I did. He wanted a name that would sound good over the loud speaker at a major league baseball game. Think, "Now batting, number 20, Soandso Soandso." We were at odds over names for several months. Finally it came down to a mathematical formula. We each picked our favorite eight from the social security list. then we crossed out four of the other persons we liked least. Then we ranked the remaining and whichever one came in highest for both of us was going to be the name.

That is how we settled on Tayte. The Coach got to choose the spelling and we gave him Coach's name for a middle name. The extra Y throws people off, but that's ok. Sometimes people ask if it is a boy name or a girl name. That's fine too. You don't hear it every day, but it isn't way far out there like Apple or something. And also it turned out to be a T.

Shaye Baby
I didn't think we would ever choose a name for this baby. We had pretty much obligated ourselves to an S name. I wanted to name her Sawyer after the character in Lost. I was quickly shot down. I also like the name Summer. In fact the first time we did the math formula approach to naming Summer was the winner. That name was also the winner the second and third time, but The Coach just couldn't come to terms with it. He didn't like Sheigh either. Finally he agreed to Shaye if he could pick the middle name. That was agreeable to me and I think he did a good job. Her middle name is Trinity. It's Biblical in a way and different so that's cool.

So those are their names, but they would still smell as stinky and be as sweet by any other name!!