I have two boys – and their names are Theodore Jack and Dexter Jay.
Honestly? I never dreamed I’d name my kids those names.
For the longest time, I loved the name Vivienne and thought for sure when (not if) I had a girl, she’d be Vivienne Margaret (Margaret after my paternal grandmother). By the time I found out Theo was a boy, I’d marked Vivi off my list because Brangelina named their little girl the same thing. They copied me. I had it first. I didn’t want to fall in their footsteps…or the footsteps of a bunch of people that named their baby Vivi because Brangelina did. That’s it – off the list.
Before Jackson became hugely popular, I loved Zavier Jackson, but R wanted it to be Xavier Jackson. I didn’t want the “X” pronunciation and we could never agree on it, so we dropped it. Jackson was R’s grandfather’s name. After X/Zavier died off, there was Owen. I had several years of wanting a baby Owen. Then, all the sudden, there was an Owen at every pool and playground and toy store. Again, off the list.
By the time I finally got pregnant, I didn’t have any baby names picked out. It seemed like quite the ominous task, choosing names that this kid would carry with him for life. I knew I wanted to incorporate my late father’s name somehow. No lie, we were watching Cosby Show reruns one night when I said “Theo. Theodore.” I don’t know what it was about the name, but it felt good rolling off my tongue and it sounded right with our last name. Within about 2 minutes, we decided our baby (if he was indeed a boy) would be Theodore. Within a week of finding out his gender, we were calling him Baby Theo. It fit and it stuck and there was no looking back. It took us a few weeks longer to decide if his middle name would be Jack or Alan but we ended up choosing Jack. No one knew my dad by his middle name, Alan, and Jack just seemed perfect.
Dexter was a different story altogether. It was harder, and partly because we didn’t know if the baby would be a boy or a girl. I got it in my head that I wanted the name to have a “Th” blend in it. Like Samantha. Or Meredith. Or Edith. Edith? Yeah, Edith. That was the name we ultimately decided on if the baby was a girl. We’d call her Edie and her middle name would be June after R’s grandmother. I entertained the idea of naming a girl Arizona (after my maternal grandmother) and calling her Zoey. R wasn’t a huge fan. Oh, and we fell in love with Mallory for a few weeks but decided against it because of my nephew named Malachi, who gets called Mal, Mali, and every other way you would naturally shorten Mallory.
After exploring ALL “th” options for boys, I realized it just wasn’t going to happen. So we went off in different directions. Harrison (but R didn’t want him to be called Harry). Griffith (too cumbersome rolling off the tongue with our last name). I loved Calvin, but with Theodore’s name, I thought it was too close to the Chipmunks’ Alvin. Crosby (too much like Cosby? as in Theo Huxtable/Bill Cosby). Also, R is a huge Pittsburgh Penguins fan and while I couldn’t care less, he didn’t want everyone to think he named his kid after Sidney Crosby. Think we over-thunk it? Maybe so.
When Dexter was born and we heard the words (and saw the evidence), “it’s a boy!” I looked at his little face and thought, he looks like a Crosby. But for whatever reason, by noon that day, we’d decided he was a Dexter. We chose Jay for his middle name after R’s father. We liked Jay and June both because they started with J and had one syllable like Jack, and {bonus} had family significance.
It’s funny how there’s a million and one names out there and you can choose any one of them – but your baby is exactly who you named him for a reason. I just can’t imagine calling my little guys anything but Theo and Dex.
I love baby names. TaIking about them, thinking about them, and choosing them. I would love to name a dozen more babies, but that means I’d have to take care of them and pay for them too. There are no more vacancies at our inn for now, so I’ll have to be content with my two boys and the names that we chose for them.
no regrets here,
~C~
I’m linking up with Mama G at Growing Up Geeky and Mindi at Simply Stavish this week for Toddle Along Tuesday.
