To "E" or Not to "E"

When we had our first daughter more than 4 years ago, we went to the hospital without a name picked out. It was a completely different scenario than with our first child.

Joshua was a surprise. We didn't know if it was a boy or a girl until a minute or two after he made his entrance when I finally remembered to look - after a bit of prompting by the audience at hand!

And yet, even with the big question mark hanging over our head, we only had the foresight to pick out a single boy's name.

We had no girl's name picked out. Not even a list of possibilities, really.

Emmy's birth was completely different. We knew it was going to be a little girl coming home from the hospital with us, and yet we still couldn't narrow the name list down below three names.

It kind of depended on how she looked when she was born!

To tell the truth, she didn't look completely like ANY of the names on the list to me, but Emma Leigh sort of fit her the best of the options, and Colby was convinced that's what she was, so at the insistence of the nurse at hand, we quickly named her and scrambled to make sure she was spelling it right!

Little did I know that I'd be having a second daughter so quickly after the first! Or a third one after that!

With Elayna we happened across another "E" name we liked and thought sounded good with the first "E" name we had, and so we had her name picked out well before she was born. It made sense, too, since our boy's name that we liked was a second "J" name, so when or if we ever had another boy, we'd have "J" names for the boys and "E" names for the girls.

We never really considered the option of having a third girl.

Another "E"?

Are there any more nice "E" names to be had? I certainly never would have picked that letter out of the alphabet to make all my girls' names from!

Do we really want to continue the popular trend like the Duggars and the Kardashians? Or should we ditch that and name her whatever name we like best at the moment?

My husband is quite the traditionalist, having had a very uncommon name himself, and being a history buff, loves the old fashioned names. I just like to keep my options open and not feel obligated to name my child one thing because everyone has heard about the favorite option if I happen to change my mind the moment I see her!

I think I just kind of psych myself out now and then by picking a name I really like and then saying it over and over again to myself until it sounds... odd. And then I have to move on to the next name on the list until I wear that one out, too. It's different when you don't have any sort of tangible person or thing you are talking to or referring to in conversation!

Try it! Just pick a word - any word - and start saying it over and over to yourself. Perhaps you should try doing this at home, and not in public, but whatever floats your boat. Grab a random object close at hand, say, a shoe, and throughout the day, say the word silently or out loud and think about the spelling, how it sounds as you speak, etc. At the end of the day, I can almost guarantee you'll think it's a weird word.

So, to sum it up here, Colby has nicely settled on having another girl with an "E" name and I am busily trying not to wear out my favorites long before the big day comes. We still have a few weeks before we have to make up our minds, after all!