Our last name canceled a lot of names that I chose by the fact that I didn’t want something that rhymed with the last name or had a syllable of “air”, or started with an S or was too trendy. I liked Sarah. Two strikes on that for starting with S and having the “air” sound in it. But I still liked it. I also liked Claire, but no deal. I liked family names and went through the family trees like crazy trying to find the perfect name. I didn’t need the names to be matching or rhyme. I had a few names that were at the top of the list, but I was always open to ideas.
We decided on Chloe early on, just because we both liked it. We couldn’t decide on a middle name until we knew the name for the other kid. We didn’t know which baby would be Chloe because we didn’t have the other name chosen yet. Chloe and “Chloe’s Sister” was how we referred to the girls in the womb. I liked Camille, he didn’t. He liked Jennifer, I didn’t. I wanted to name one baby after his grandmothers Ada and Maxine. He said no way. I wanted to name one of the girls after my grandmas Bonnie and June. But I can’t have one of my children with the initials of B.S. So that wouldn’t work. Maybe we could have Bonnie as a middle name. I also liked our birth stones of Ruby and Pearl for middle names, but Ryan vetoed that. It went on and on.
I’d research names while at work. I’d send text messages with four or five names listed. “Mya. Talia. Darby. Jillian. Piper.” I’d get a text message back saying, “Nah, what about Jessica?” I liked Jessica for a middle name. It was his sister’s name. She had passed away years earlier from cancer leaving a son who was less than a year old. The in-laws had a long custody battle for him and finally settled on a visitation schedule that was never followed by the other side of the family. I didn’t want to deny him that name although I wasn’t in love with it. Jessica would do for a middle name. But I didn’t want anyone to think we were trying to replace the memory of his sister.
He said, “What about Lyn?” I said no. He told me why he decided on Lyn as an option, and then I liked it. Get ready to get confused. If you take the last name of SHARICH and the first names of RACHEL and RYAN and cancel out the duplicate letters from the last name (RACHEL and RYAN), you are left with first name letters of E, L, Y, and N.
So, we figured that we could have one middle name be Lyn but maybe spelled Lyne. Many people pointed out that the spelling with an “e” on the end looked more like a pronunciation of line. You won’t please everybody.Sometimes I wondered if the people who kept baby names a secret had the right idea. Everyone asked all the time about names. Everyone gave their input, wanted or unwanted. I smiled and nodded and did whatever I wanted anyway. We continued our Chloe and Chloe’s Sister joke until the very last. Some people got it, others thought it was cruel that we were naming one of the babies “Chloe’s Sister.” Oh, wow.
The girls were born on Thursday at 8am and by late morning on Friday, we were still calling them “A” and “B” until we could decide. Then the birth certificate clerk came in the room and asked if we had filled the forms out yet. I panicked. “Can you give us until tomorrow?” Sure. So, Ryan and I looked at each other knowing that when all the family went home, we’d be dickering about names, again. And this time, we HAD to decide. I am happy that it came down to the last minute because we couldn’t have chosen a better name for “Chloe’s Sister.”
Our final choices of Adelyn Marie and Chloe Maxine made me smile. Now, who was who? We decided that “A” should go with the “A” name of Adelyn.
The next morning, we were finally able to properly introduce our two day old babies to their family members. I was happy to choose family names and would do it again. The tears of appreciation were well worth it for naming a baby after someone. I teared up too.
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