Finding the Perfect Name

Naming a child is tough work.  Serious business.  I mean, the name will follow the child for the rest of his or her life!  That's kind of crazy to think about!  Naming a child is such a huge responsibility, but also a wonderful privilege.

Deciding on a name for our second daughter was much more difficult than naming Harper.  Adam and I both loved the name Harper from the day we heard it and knew that if we had a daughter, that would be her name, no questions asked.  We didn't find out the gender of Harper before hand, so maybe that is why it was so easy, we only had one girl name and one boy name.

Before we even got pregnant, we liked the name Elliet for a girl.  I originally heard the name on a reality TV show called 'Quints By Surprise.'  (The mother also had a few other girl names that I liked - Britton and Ryan)  We told ourselves that if we ever had another girl, Elliet would be the name.

Then we got pregnant and decided to find out the gender this time around.  We told ourselves that we really weren't going to waste our time picking out names until we knew the gender.  We did make some preliminary lists for both genders, and this is what we came up with:

Boy                                      Girl
Easton                                   Elliet
Piercen                                  Hope
Sawyer                                 Aspen
Huxley                                  Rowyn
Holden                                 Hadyn

Adam really liked Murphy for a boy, which I DID NOT like at all!  I loved the names Aspen or Hazel for a girl...which Adam HATED both!

Well after we found out the gender, our baby girl was called Hope almost the entire rest of the pregnancy!  Hope Elizabeth, how pretty!  Harper gave us the approval, and then decided to tell almost anyone who asked what names we had picked out, even though it was supposed to be a secret!  I guess that's why you don't tell a 3 1/2 year old a secret, huh?!

I had my reservations about naming our daughter Hope, as I didn't want people to associate her name with the actual meaning of the word 'hope.'  Or I didn't want people to categorize the name along with similar names such as Faith, Joy, etc.  And then it happened, Harper's preschool teacher made a comment that made us change our minds.  She said "So Harper says you're going to name your baby Faith, no I mean Hope."  And that's when we decided to go back to naming our next daughter Elliet.

Now, we did have our reservations about naming our daughter Elliet, as we knew that majority of the people would associate it being a boys name, and not like it.  We also had to decide on the perfect spelling: Elliot, Elliott, Elliet, Elliett, Elliette.....decisions, decisions.  We knew that we would sometime call her Ellie for short, so we chose the spelling that would correlate with that the most.

Elliet's middle name is Elizabeth, which is my mother-in-law's middle name.  Harper's middle name is Marie, which is my mom's (and mine) middle name.  So each of the girls is essentially named after one of their grandmas.

So there you have it folks - how we came up with the name Elliet - which I'm sure is a burning questions that most of you have.

Luckily we won't have anymore children to name, as I'm pretty sure that we're done having kids.  BUT, my mom just told me the cutest boy name the other day that I'm in love with....Creed/Crede....we just may have to try for that boy now........JUST KIDDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Related Article: What's in a name?  (Read how we came up with Harper's name)