I came across
My Very Own Modern Family through another real life friend who write blogs at
She Can't Shut Up. I decided to do this link up (even though I'm late!), just because I needed to write, and this was something I love. Names.... I have two girl names and a boy name picked out in case something happens and God decides to give me another child. One name my husband will never let me name my girl though, so I've secretly named my Pilot that name. LoL!
So here I am...names...my name, my husband's name, my kids' names. I love them all. My cat's name, not so much, but it suits him somehow. Names are a huge part of life. It seems as though we name EVERYTHING. Like I stated above, I've even secretly named my car. My parents name their cars too. My dad's Jeep is Jose. I don't remember what my mom's Jeep is, but I know she has a name. We even have nicknames for some of our friends and whatnot (some that those friends should probably never know, though that's not the case with my friends...they all know what we nicknamed them IF we have a nickname for them).
Let's start off easy. My name. My mom had been set on naming me Karen Francis for awhile. She loved the name. That is until...dun dun dun...my Mimi (dad's mom) pointed out the initials... KFC.. That ended that name and they moved on to another...Stephanie Eileen. Stephanie was my mom's FAVORITE girls name. Of course...hardly anyone knows me as Stephanie. Why? My dad nicknamed me Stevie at birth. My parents and brothers are really the only ones who can get away with calling me Stephanie without me getting furious at them. Of course, in professional life (doctors, banks, etc.) I am Stephanie and I live with it. I've thought about changing my name legally to Stevie, but it's really just too much of a hassle and it really doesn't impact me too much since really, almost no one knows me as Stephanie. I think even my in-laws were surprised at first to find out Stevie was a nickname and not my real name.
From
www.sheknows.com
The meaning of Stephanie is:
Crown; victorious.
The meaning of Eileen is:
From a surname derived from the Old French 'aveline' meaning hazelnut.
My husband's name is Joshua Michael. I'm not sure how his name came about or anything else about it in his parents' eyes. There is a huge story behind Josh's family and I really don't feel I can or should go into it, especially in this entry. Maybe someday, if I get his permission I can explain his family that I love so much.
The meaning of Joshua is:
The meaning of Michael is:
Now onto our own children's names. I picked out Caralyn Mae when I was in 10th grade. I loved the name Carolyn (my kindergarten teacher's daughter's name...I used to babysit her and her brother, Chris on occasion when I was old enough to), but I wanted to be able to shorten it, so I switched the 'o' to an 'a'. It worked for me. I still loved it when I found out I was pregnant with my first child. Our boy's choice was Connor Donovan. We had picked that name out when we were still dating. Josh didn't mind the girls name I had previously picked out so we kept that as our first girl name. I didn't know the meaning of the name then, and it wasn't that important to me when I was pregnant either. But I loved the sound of the name flowing together with our last name...it sounded so much better with our last name than it did with my maiden name (which I used when I picked it out...I named my "Crying Baby" from Child Development class Caralyn Mae since I had no clue if I would ever have children of my own.
The meaning of Caralyn (taken from Carolyn) is:
The meaning of Mae is:
Since I picked out Cara's name I let Josh pick out the names for our second child. His girl name was Aria Skye and his boy name was Alaric Stefan. I helped with middle names, but he just couldn't choose/find one he liked with the first names, so I gave him some suggestions and he picked from them. We researched for Alaric's middle name for a couple months until he decided upon Stefan. I gave him a couple weeks to choose differently since Stefan was so close to my real name and I didn't really want family names (come to find out, Mae is a family name, but I didn't know that at the time of naming her). So Alaric Stefan it was. It took awhile to get used to Alaric...my mom HATED it, but now she's good with it.
The meaning of Alaric is:
The meaning of Stefan is:
Crown.
I also want to reference my book "The complete book of baby names" by Lesley Bolton and the experts at mostbabynames.com in some baby name meanings
Stephanie: (Greek) Feminine form of Stephen; Crowned in victory
Eileen: (Gaelic) Form of Evelyn, meaning "a birdlike woman"
Joshua: (Hebrew) God is salvation
Michael: (Hebrew) Who is like God?
Caralyn: {Taken from Cara, where Caralyn is found in their alternate names} (Italian/Gaelic) One who is dearly loved/A good friend
{Taken from Caroline, where Carolyn is found in their alternate names} (Latin) Feminine form of Charles; a joyous song; a small, strong woman
Mae: {Taken from May, where Mae is found in their alternate names} (Latin) Born during hte month of May; form of Mary, meaning "star of the sea/from the sea of bitterness"
Alaric: (German) A noble ruler
Stefan:{Taken from Stephen, where Stefan is found in their alternate names} (Greek) Crowned with garland
It's amazing to me how many different meanings and "categories" you can find for some names. I liked my book better than the websites for the most part. It didn't overwhelm me for the most part. I guess really, you just never know truly what a name means or where it's from, what variation is it of what name originally, etc. Different sites say different things. Different books say different things.
I won't go into the meanings of the names I like for a boy and girl if I ever have another baby. I just hope I can someday use my names in some manner. Like I told my husband...if I could be guaranteed I'd have another boy, I'd totally have another baby. With my luck, I'd have another girl and she'd be even sassier and headstrong than my first. I couldn't handle that.
What are some of your favorite names?
