This post actually started out as a comment to Heather's post over at Cool Zebras about picking a name for her new little one who will be debuting next month. I decided to just write my own post instead of taking up so much of her comment space.
In her post, Heather discusses the desire to give her children names that are not too common, but also not too off the wall. I hear her! Anyone who knows us knows that we felt the same way when naming our children.
Even though we didn't know Twinkle was going to be a girl, we settled on a name pretty easily. As I recall it anyway. We didn't have any boy names picked out, so we got lucky there.
With Sparkle, since we were adopting from China, we were pretty certain that she would be a girl. We had a more difficult time choosing a name for her. When we first started the adoption process, I was amazed at the number of people who already had a name picked and embroidered on blankets. Let me tell you, as someone who didn't want her child having the same name as many others in her class at school, this desire was compounded by being part of the China adoption community. It seems like there are just a handful of names that most girls adopted from China are given.
Anyway, why did we have the trouble we did naming Sparkle? For one thing, we knew she'd already have a name and didn't feel comfortable taking that from her. For another, I wanted to at least see her face before we picked a name. I didn't feel that way when I was pregnant with Twinkle, so I can't explain why that was, but it just was.
True, we discussed possible names long before we saw her face, but "the list" had at least 15 to 20 names on it. After we received her first pictures and we needed to actually start filling out paperwork with her name on it, we decided we needed to buckle down and decide. It was on an airplane flying back from New York about this time last year that we finally settled. And it was a name that wasn't on the big list that I'd made over many months. It was a name from a list Mr. S made in his Palm Pilot before Twinkle was born. A list that I didn't know existed.
The name is perfect for her. It has many nicknames, but none are bad. We kept her Chinese name for her middle name. When she's older, I wonder if she'll go through a period of time deciding what SHE wants to be called.
5 comments:
I always wondered how people did that, named the kids they were adopting. I assumed they'd already have names and I wondered if you just started calling them a different name. That's really interesting.
I think I'd have had to wait to meet the child before picking a name too. It seems different for some reason. I don't know why!
Her name is beautiful and perfect - it is very sweet that Mr Swizzle kept the list. Twinkle and Sparkle go so well together!!
I love hearing about how people chose their kids' names. I think it's adorable that your husband had a secret list!
(Speaking of adorable, the kids are too!)
That is just so sweet. Like she was already being planned for before ya'll even knew it.
Well you know that the Duke and I HAD to see our girls before we decied on a name. Poor Tinkerbel didn't have one for days while she sat in the NICU.
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