August 22, 2018

Choosing a baby name: Wells Easton

This will be the last completely "baby" post for a bit, aside from a few confessions or bits and pieces here and there (because confessions are good for us), simply because my blog veered into dog blog territory at a few points and I would like it to not turn into a mommy blog. Just because. I do have other things to talk about. Even if he is pretty much a full-time job. 


Choosing a baby name was hard but was also really easy in a strange way.  Having taught in the public schools for exactly 10 years, I knew every name I never, ever wanted to hear again and every name that was so overused that I had one or two of those kids every year.

For example, anything with an -en or -on or -an or -yn or -ynn or...you get the idea. That double n is becoming super popular, by the way.  My favorites are the years when I had a Caden/Jaden/Braden combo (spelling is never uniform, of course). None of those names are bad or un-cute names. They're great in small doses and I can see how someone who is not a teacher would use them. But when you spend all your time differentiating between "Caiden with an i? " and "Caden without an i?" (because that's how the kids will refer to them when you say "Caden/Caiden!"), you don't ever want to think about the name again.

This past year I had THREE sets of double names, so last initials were our friend.

However, despite the -on, way back in 2012, I decided I really liked the name Easton. Scott did too. It's baseball-related and Scott has played a lot of baseball and he liked that part. So that became our official boy's name were we to ever have a boy. I've never had a student named Easton, so that was a plus. It was also a nice ode to the east coast; a place we were from but hadn't lived in 9 years.

Back in November, when we discovered we were having a baby, I started re-evaluating. I knew it was a boy. There was not a question about it in my mind. I started thinking of the name Wells. I was almost afraid to suggest it to Scott, in case he hated it. I wanted something untrendy and classic-sounding, but not classic to the point where it's becoming overused. Wells seemed to fit that and, while I knew of a few out there, it's not on many baby name lists at all. Scott loved it so we would go with Easton for a middle name.

The only baby name list I found Wells on, and I've gotten a lot of baby name lists sent to my Facebook in the last few months:


If people asked me what his name was before he was born, I would tell them. I initially insisted that we keep it mostly a secret because I didn't want opinions tromped all over it and I wanted to get used to it first. By the third trimester, if someone asked, I told them. Especially strangers because their thoughts and opinions didn't have a bearing on it and I knew they wouldn't be able to tell the whole world for me because they didn't even know my name, you know?

Honestly, we've gotten nothing but compliments on his name so far, so that is either really nice or really polite of people. At the hospital, a few people thought we made it up but no, it exists out there even if it isn't super common.

Side note: We've noticed, in the places we've taken him, that people are crazily drawn to babies. This isn't specific to him, I know, but some people just love babies. I've never been drawn to a baby (does that sound awful?). I'm drawn to puppies. In fact, a teacher brought her puppy to work on a teacher day a few months ago and many of us spent hours in the hallway playing with this puppy (a 10 week old Corgi). If someone would bring their baby to work, I'd just continue working in my room. 

Second side note: Sure, I thought of Wells Adams from The Bachelor franchise, but I just really liked the name so, no, our baby was not named after The Bachelor. Also, I've always liked surnames as first names. This is a very southern trend (Wells is most popular in North Carolina), and that's odd because I've never actually lived in the south. 

1 comment:

  1. It kind of makes me crazy how drawn people are to babies. I love babies but I’ve never just talked to random people because they have a baby. We are constantly having people talk to us and/or to Ryder to say how cute he is. Which he is, but why does having a baby give strangers a license to talk to you?!

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