Names to me are fascinating and very meaningful, so I put a lot of time and thought into picking the names for our sons. I'm really picky about names, because I think they are SO important in life.  Unfortunately, Tony is very picky too and he absolutely hated most of the names I had picked out.  

I liked Vincent, Paul, Ted, Benjamin, Douglas, and many others, but he wasn't having any of it. Also, our last name was a major complication because it's very long and starts with a "G", so that ruled out all "G" and "J" names because they just didn't sound right. That's a problem because I discovered most of the strong boy names start with "J". James, Jason, Jeremy, Jacob, Jeremiah - all are names I would have loved but not with our last name. Girl's names would have been SO much easier because you can be a lot more creative and there are a lot more choices, but it seems that we just don't "do" girls. Our side of the family tree is extremely boy-heavy.

I also wasn't having any of the "popular" names. I didn't want them to be John or Mike or Steve or something, nor did I want any of the more unusual names like Norman or Walter or Zeke or something like that. I also had a prejudice against them having a Jr. name or having names with the same initial. I HATE that! It is one of my big pet peeves. We have several friends who named their kids with the same initial and I can't hardly tell the kids apart! My own sister even did that - she is Karla and her daughters are Kris and Kate. Of course, I could always tell my own nieces apart, but it can get confusing. Our preacher's boys are Gabe and Gordon and I never have figured out which one is which after 7 or 8 years.

One thing I thought about was my grandfather's name, which was Sam. It was kind of fun because that was his name and also his initials. Tony was even agreeable, but I nixed it when I found out that was the 5th most popular dog name - woof, woof! There's also the Sam-I-Am phenomenon, which I knew would never die down. The Rocky movies came out probably 30 years ago and I still get the "Yo Adrian!" thing at least once a month.

Ryan's name, obviously was already set in stone by the time I came on the scene. He was almost three when we got married, but I liked that they gave him a unique first name, but used Tony's Dad's name as his middle name. Although Ryan is a bit popular for my taste. All through school, he usually had to be Ryan G. because there was more than one Ryan in his class. Also my mother-in-law had a way of southernizing it so it came out as one syllable instead of two. More like Rhine instead of Ry-an. They do that when I go down south. I become Ad-run rather than Ad-ri-an. Oh well, you get used to it.

When we found out Matt was going to be a boy, we argued over names for months and months. I looked around at several friends of mine who had long last names like ours and looked at what names seemed to work best with them and it kept coming around to Matt. It was a little more popular than I would have liked, but we added Tony's middle name, which was also his father and grandfather's middle name and it just seemed to sound right - Matthew Joseph. It was funny though. When he was little, he couldn't say Joseph properly and instead he would say Jofus. One day while we were in church, he was telling us all about Mary and Jofus and we were just about rolling on the floor. So his nickname for many years was Matthew Jofus. Now our youngest grandson gets to be Noah Jofus too, so I thought that was fun to carry on the tradition.

Ten years later, when I was pregnant with Blake, we started the argument all over again. Tony felt that since this was likely his last time as a father, he should get free choice of names. Since I was the one with the swollen feet, huge belly, and going through my 2nd C-section with another gigantic baby, I was not quite agreeing with him. All of Tony's children were more than 8 pounds and Matt was 10 pounds (yikes!) at a week early, so I figured he'd definitely had the easier part of the deal. So we went back and forth with all the same choices as we'd used for Matt, but again none of them sounded right.

By then, my father had passed, but I didn't really care for his name, which was Wayne. Nor did I like my grandfather's name, which was Ralph. But I did kind of like the name Blayne, which was similar to my Dad's name. So finally, in the last month or so, I gave Tony three choices - Blake, Blair, or Blayne. I'm not sure where I came up with Blair. Maybe it was in a romance novel I was reading or something, or maybe I liked Tony Blair, I dunno.

Anyway, he obviously picked Blake and we paired it with Tony's name for Blake Anthony. I kind of like it. It's a somewhat unusual name, so you don't have several kids in his class with it, although I'm kind of alarmed that it's starting to be used as a girl's name. When he was born, I'd never heard of a girl named Blake, but now I've seen a few of them - yikes! My biggest fear is that they'll put a character on the Simpson's or some place named Blake. Just think of all the mothers who named their boys Bart! That used to be a very respectable name, but it's changed forever by pop culture.

Blake has his share of nicknames. Sometimes we call him Blake the Flake from Salt Lake. I think Ryan came up with Blake'n'bits - like bacon bits. That one has stuck around for quite a few years. Blakenstein didn't really catch on. His teachers used to call him Blakie or Blakers when he was little, but he didn't like it much and we kind of discouraged it because he was on the small side anyway and we didn't want him to be treated like a baby.

I've thought about doing a scrapbook page to show how all the middle names are related and the links through the generations, but I just haven't quite figure out how to lay it out effectively. I'll have to do that one of these days....

Let's see, here are some of the more unusual names I've run across:

Jack Kamer (say it fast)
Daniel D Daniels (what's the D for? You guessed it!) They call him 3D
Carter Horney (his wife pronounces it Hornay. I'd pronounce it Smith!)
Brett Butler (I actually knew 2 men with this name)
Carroll who was married to a woman named Carol. The kids would answer the phone and ask if you wanted to speak to Carroll-him or Carol-her.
Kelly Green - her nephew's name is Hunter Green - yuck
Someone my cousin knows named her twins Crystal and Fallon - guess she watched a lot of Dynasty - ugh. Stuck in the 80's forever!

Any other fun name stories to contribute?