Sunday, April 15, 2012

What's with that Name?

Many people have asked me how we came up with the name Mailynn Joy for our duaghter in China. Gene and I really wanted unique names for our children. He went to school in Florida for Ultrasound when we were engaged and rode back and forth with a lady and her maiden name was Atley. As soon as we heard the name we agreed that if we ever had a little girl, we would name her Atley. This is how Atley got her name.

When I was pregnant with Grason, I taught a class with a lady that metioned that she worked for a lawyer named Grason. We both liked the name because it was different and we had never heard of that name before. I changed the spelling from Greyson to Grason and we had our boys name.

Alden, was a suprise! (And still is!!!) We thought because I had complications with my first two pregnancies, we would stop at two children. Thank goodness God had other plans! The summer before I found out I was pregnant we went to Florida with my family and went to tour a Naval Aviation Museum. I saw a man's name (Aiden) that had been killed in WW11 and thought to myself "IF" I ever had another son I liked that name. I found out later that year that I was pregnant I told Gene about the name. He didn't like Aiden but said what about "Alden". So that is how Alden got his name.

Now, we knew we were adopting. We did not know if it would be a girl or a boy(I felt in my heart it was a girl). A lot of people think if you are adopting from China it is always a girl, but we realized very quickly, that there are more boys waiting right now in China than ever before. Gene and I decided since we didn't check a box when we got pregnant then we needed to let God decide on the gender of the child we adopted also, so we said either. Anyways, I just could not come up with a boys name. I knew if it was a girl that I wanted to use my middle name some how in her name and I also wanted it to include a chinese name.

Funny story....Atley knew what my desire was for a girls name, so one day she was watching "Arthur" on TV (now anyone reading this know that she just "happened" to pause for a moment on this chaannel cause she is way to cool and too old to watch Arthur but it happened to be about Buster's family had adopted from CHINA and they named their baby Mei-lyn. Atley hollered for me to come in there and look...she said Mom that is what we need to name our baby. So, that is how it happened. Mei, is chinese and is a commone chinese name and lynn is my middle name that I wanted to use in our child's name if it was a girl. I changed the spelling a little to Mailynn and I love the name Joy. She has already brought us such joy and I think of all the ladies I have know in my life time that are named Joy and they are amazing, strong women for Christ....so that is how we came up with all four of our childrens names.

Post comments on cool or funny stories of how you came up with your children's names. I think this will be fun!

Blessings,
Stacey

2 comments:

  1. This is a great post! Loved learning how y'all named the children. Ryan Thomas got his name from his dad and my dad. Ryan is his dad's middle name and Thomas is my dad's middle name.

    We named Lela before she was born. Driving to Texas for the first time I saw a sign that said Lela, Texas. I told Chad that it sounded like a beautiful town and if we had a girl I'd love to name her that. He then told me that Lela was his grandma's name...how perfect! Her middle name, Marie, is also my middle name!

    Of course you know William is a family name on the Spain side. I really liked Liam, and Chad did too but Liam is just another form of William so we went with that. Then we just really liked the name Riley so that's what we went with. We had a fun time keeping his name a secret for as long as we could, until one day I let it slip!

    And lastly Sam. After Papaw passed away Chad said he'd like our next child to share the same name, Charles. If we had a girl she would have been Charlotte or Charley for short. But since we had a boy it was Charles. We used that for his middle name. We couldn't decide if we liked Jacob or Samuel better and while I was in labor we called Jenny Beth and asked her...she picked Samuel!

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  2. Yeah... we have no cool moments. I just picked names and that was that! I love that you have stories!
    -Erica

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