Janie & Jacob

My friend Lawanda posted on her blog how she and her Dh came up with the names of their four girls, then asked those reading to tell their children's name stories on our blogs. So here goes it...

Janie - Hebrew "gracious, merciful"
Ashlin - Irish "vision"
Named three days after leaving the hospital, Janie was a tough one. Mark and I could not agree on girl names. We went through books/books/books and thought of family names - we weren't getting anywhere. Mark liked less common, older type names. I tended toward older names that, annoyingly, were very popular at the time.

Mark really liked Janie. I was non-committal. I didn't love it, didn't hate it. We both liked Ashlin. After coming home from the hospital, we kept bouncing the two around and upon giving full naming rights for #2 to me (within reason - no Gooseberry Philomonia), decided on Janie Ashlin. Of course, now I simply adore her name and couldn't imagine her with anything else. I think it's pretty cool that in nearly 8 years we've run across only one other Janie anywhere near her age.

Jacob - Hebrew "may God protect, supplanter"
Reid - English "red"
Jacob was easy. Back in pre-Janie days we had already decided on Jacob as a first name for a boy. Originally we were going to go with Jacob Charlton, but decided on Jacob Reid - Reid being my paternal grandfather's name. The only waffling we did with him was what were going to actually call the boy. Right before his birth we decided we were going to call him Jack (both of Mark's grandfathers were named Jack, I have an Uncle Jack). His first day he was Jack, but it just didn't seem to fit. He was definitely a Jacob.