Who's who: Baby name stories...

I just did a comment on a friend's blog post that turned into a total essay, so I thought I'd pop it here ;) Kate had shared her baby-naming stories over here. With a dear friend expecting a girl, it is a fun topic to share.

I love hearing naming stories :) Ben and I felt happy to have relatively similar taste, I known some couples have choices that are quite opposite to one another, LOL. We also found out genders at about 20 weeks, and wanted names finalised well before birth if possible. I just felt more settled that way.

Sienna I chose, 9 years ago. As an artist, I was naming her from the paint colour, it wasn't an unheard of name but at the time was quite unusual and wasn't in many books. I also loved the travel reference, as in the city of Siena in Italy. Now it's quite the opposite, having been a top ten name in Australia a few years ago! Either way, it's a pretty name and I'm happy :) After finding out she was a girl we went to a cafe and chose 'Belle' as her middle name. I love Disney films and Ariel didn't sound as good, LOL. We liked how 'Sienna Belle' could almost be one name from the way it sounds.

Shortlisted if she was a boy were Camden, Ash and Gabe (Gabriel). Tristan and Elijah were also on the list but not top choices.

Ash we had chosen finding it in one big fat baby book, as in, Ash tree. We loved the tree reference. Ben had a high school friend he had been close to called Asha and had always loved her name, so something similar had been on the list anyway. We said to one another that Sienna had been my choice, but Ben completely agreed. Ash was his choice, but I loved it too. Daniel is the name of Ben's younger brother who died at the age of 20 shortly after we got married. So that was an easy middle name choice, and a way of letting the kids know about the Uncle they'd never meet.

We had Ashanti Miette chosen for Ash if he was a girl. I really wanted Miette in there somewhere but having not used it for Sienna meant we missed out in the end!

Ben calls our youngest the 'hippy name' of the three, LOL. I got Cedar from looking online. We had London and Dublin as name options but weren't really settled or in agreement about them. We agreed on Rhodes as a middle name before choosing the first name, as Ben always loved a style of music that used a type of keyboard called the Rhodes and I was looking for travel references (it's an island). Anyhow, I was kind of stressed that we hadn't decided for sure once we knew he was a boy, it was quite annoying for me. I ended up finding Cedar on the blog of an American photographer and it was a perfect fit - another tree name, and we both just loved it. Cedar Rhodes it is.

If he was a girl he was going to be called Adelaide Miette. I would have loved to use that name as well :)

So, girl names we shortlisted all together included:

• Sienna
• Adelaide (kind of old-fashioned, German originally and with an English nod, plus our hometown)
• Adeline
• Miette (means 'sweet, small thing' in French, an abbreviation of Marguerite, french for Margaret, Ben's mother's name)
• Ashanti (African)
• Belle
• Evangeline
• Ariel
• Kairi (love of Japanese culture, we had this shortlisted as a middle name for ages)
• Asha
• Quinn
• China
• Indigo

Boy names that were listed at one point or another and that I like:

• Ash
• Camden
• Tristan
• Gabe / Gabriel
• Elijah
• London
• Dublin
• Rhodes
• Rafe

At school we've had a couple of kids called Sage - a girl and a boy - and I think that's a lovely name, also quite organic in feel. This sharing thing is fun and interesting, I'd love to know what are your favourites?

Sharing these stories remind me that I haven't shared birth stories for either of the boys yet. I'll get there eventually ;)