What's In a Name?

Oh Juliet, there is so much to a name. Let me tell you. We had the hardest time coming up with a name for our precious little boy. We went through so many. First of all, I did not want something popular which I determined would be anything in the top 100 names on the Social Security website for 2008. Other things that were important to us were having a short name and something that was most definitely a boy's name. I get things addressed to "Mr. Shelby" and it drives me nuts. One name we really liked was Dean but it is the name of Rob's boss so it was out. Next was Clark but we could both think of Clarks we don't like so that was out. We liked Harrison for a while but got over it. I liked Wade, Grant, Finn and Sawyer but Rob said no. Rob liked Buck and Huck (seriously) and I said no. Some others we considered were Henry and Theodore which were both in the top 100 so they were out. I liked Reid but it sounds funny with our last name, Let's take a quick break in our story now for a cute baby photo.



Finally, I realized I was stuck on names that sounded like they were out of the wild west- Cole, Cooper, Bennett, Jasper among others we had already discussed. Wyatt was one that had already been on my mind but I was afraid it was too popular, thus violating my one main rule. With Rex, I was stuck on names that sounded like old-time movie stars- Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Clark Gable and the like. But this time it was outlaws and cowboys of the wild west for some reason. So one night Rob was looking on the computer and he came up with Zane. Zane was the leading contender for quite a while but we couldn't find a middle name (which had to be a family name) that we liked with it and I still preferred Wyatt. About 2 weeks before baby was going to be born, I asked myself, "Would you rather have a name you really, really liked or one you didn't like as much but chose just because it was less popular?" Hmm. So I finally, with maybe one week to go, decided that it was more important to have a name I really liked and we chose Wyatt which was absolutely the right choice. Here's Wyatt again.