When I was 16, I was one of those girls who had long lists of names for my future children, but as I’ve aged, I’ve come to hate all of them for very valid reasons. Mostly, I’ve met people named those names and they ruined it for me. The longer I’m on this earth, and the more people I meet, the harder it is to name children.
I really dislike naming my children. I’m ultimately happy with what we’ve chosen for all 3, but the process it took to get there was not my favorite.
This time around was doubly hard since we had to pick out boy AND girl options.
I didn’t take on the task of even thinking about them until I was past the first trimester. Then I saw a boy’s name in the credits of some movie. Don’t ask me which one. Pregnancy brain lives on.
Immediately, I thought, “Hey, I kinda like that!” Followed by, “Pretty sure Scott’s going to hate it.”
But I started to fall in love with it, and then I was scared to even suggest it to Scott because it was pretty much the only boy name I thought I’d ever like again. I tried to play it cool and casual when I suggested it to him one night before we fell asleep. I braced myself for the veto.
“Hmmmm…. yeah…. yeah? Yeah. I like that. I like it! Sounds like… a scientist!” he replied.
So obviously since that was way too easy, I just knew it had to be a girl.
And the girls names continued to spin us in circles, right up to a few hours before I gave birth. We considered quite a few, but our top contenders were:
Eloise– I liked how this sounded with Leyna. It’s origin is German, and Scott’s family is very proud of their German heritage. But I figured it would get shortened to Ella, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. Ella is far more popular than Eloise.
So that made me think about…
Elsa– Similar to Ella, but different. Just different enough to not run into a lot of other little Elsas on the playground, maybe? Also German. But Scott wasn’t sold.
With a due date in July, I let myself consider…
Juliet- And I LOVED this. For a hot minute. After that passed, I just didn’t feel 100% about it. I came back to it a lot, though. And Scott liked it, too.
Then I mentioned…
June– This was Scott’s favorite, and I loved it more and more each time we brought it up. It was our final choice, going into the hospital to deliver.
If we had come out of the hospital with a little girl, she’d be named…
June Robin Krause
The middle name would be in honor of Robinson, a family surname on my mom’s side.
As the story goes, though, we did not come home with a little June Robin. Instead, we stuck with that very first boys name we fell in love with back in February. And we gave him his daddy’s name as a middle name, though there will be no calling him Scotty or Scott Jr.
We’ll stick to calling him Lowell.
And maybe he’ll grow up to be a scientist.