What's In A Name?

I have belonged to the community Multiples... and More! ever since the girls picture was in one of their contests but I don't often participate in their post questions or polls but this one seemed to fun to pass up.

The big question is: How did you choose your multiples names?

Oh my word, this was so hard for us! One thing I knew from the outset is that they would either all have K or C names or none of them would. I was certainly leaning towards none of them since I had/have a hard enough time with just saying Kaitlyn and Caleb :)

I also knew I really didn't want any 2 kids to have the same first letter. Maybe it's a strange nuerosis of mine but there are 26 letters in the alphabet and I'd like to use more than 1 of them for my kids.

How do you feel about "matchy" names? I don't care for matchy names. We decided not to even work on names until we knew what we were having - although we did make a list of names we liked. But I didn't want to come up with 12 names and then pick which ones were better or worse than any other. Then we had a dilemma where Kirk liked Jacob for a boy and I liked Julianna for a girl but didn't want to use "J" for 2 names and not 3.

Did you worry about their names "coordinating"? Yes! Kirk would joke that we should name them Faith, Hope and Susan just to be difficult. For me, just being triplets is "unit" enough - I didn't want to add to it by making their names rhyme or start with the same letter.

It's a serious load of issues when you name multiples! Since they were born we've been asked hundreds of times what they're names are - I'm sure out of curiousity as to how we named them.

Did you name your babies before you met them, or wait until you saw them to assign names? We named them long before they were born. At 18 weeks we found out they were all girls. I was shocked beyond belief but it solved our dilemma about Jacob and Julianna :)

I knew I wanted the name Julianna immediately. It's the girls name I've liked for years. When I was pregnant with Kaitlyn, the name Julianna was in the running but I worried it might be too long (of course I also worried that Kaitlyn was too popular but we decided to go with it anyway and I still love it!).

I had wanted Julianna Abigail - I just liked it. But then I decided I liked Abigail so much I wanted to use it.

Now you're thinking, "but you don't have an Abigail!"

Well, we did for a few weeks in utero :) Alyssa was Abigail.

That was until I had a conversation with a good friend of mine. She mentioned that she liked the name Alyssa and I commented that Alyssa had been on our original list of names we liked. I mentioned it to Kirk and as you can see we decided to go with Alyssa instead.

Alyssa Elaine - Elaine is a family name - it's my mother's middle name.

Alyssa Elaine 11/16/06



Alyssa Elaine 11/16/09



As for Rachel - Kirk picked Rachel.

Rachel Gabrielle - not a family name - daddy chose it for her.

Rachel means "Little Lamb" - she was baby C in utero and her name couldn't have been more fitting - she was always the smallest so we made sure the doctor told us who was who as she took them out of me. Rachel should have been 3rd but she was 2nd but the doctor was sure to tell us that it was still Rachel.

Rachel Gabrielle 11/16/06



Rachel Gabrielle 11/16/09



Julianna Mabel - Mabel is a family name. Kirk's mom's name was Mabel June - she died when I was pregnant with Caleb. It seemed fitting to use her name for one of our daughters and I am glad that we did.

Julianna Mabel 11/16/06



Julianna Mabel 11/16/09



Did you consider the popularity of a name as a deciding factor? In some ways, yes. I prefer less common names - after all my name is Dorinda - talk about unpopular! I probably didn't break the top 1000 the year I was born :) But being popular didn't rule it out for us - we went with what we liked.

What were your second choices? For girls we really didn't have any - 6 was enough to come up with! Though we did have the name Natalie on the list - we haven't had a Natalie yet.

For boys - we had a number of names: Logan, Micah, Tyler and Jacob were all in the running just in case any one of our girls was actually a boy :)

And that's how we named our babies! Three years later we still like their names - I'm happy with our decision not to rhyme their names or use the same initial especially when we need to label things! For Christmas we got them pillows with thir own initial on it - if they'd had the same there would be no telling them apart!

But more importantly than still loving their names we still love our girls :) We still love Kaitlyn Brianna and Caleb Ralph too (yes, Ralph is definitely a family name!).

This was fun :) Want to read more naming stories or share one of your own? Head over to Multiples...and More!