Name That Quad! – Part 1
After posting the q&a; post about a month ago I was asked (again) about how we came up with the names for the boys. It’s a question we are frequently asked as many can’t imagine coming up with 8 NAMES, when they struggled to come up with even ONE! (In fact it’s even on on FAQ Page for St. Vincent’s Tiny Successes.) In all of the commotion of the NICU, we somehow left out this minor detail after the boys were born….whoops! Let me dedicate this post to explaining that process…
Brad and I sat down one night, I believe around 18 wks. and wrote down our short list of names we liked and then did some “research” to find other names to consider. Believe it or not we came up with 9 names in about 40 minutes! (We had Henry’s middle name narrowed down to 2.) In reality, I think it was somewhat easier to come up with 4 babies names than just one….we didn’t have to completely agree on the “ultimate name” and were more willing to compromise. Plus, I was a speech therapist in the schools so I had a pretty extensive list of what our boys wouldn’t be named. =)
We had 4 names picked out, but we didn’t assign them to a certain baby in my belly because they moved around too much to keep track of….We didn’t want them to come out with an identity crisis on top of being quadruplets! HA! However, we somewhat had a sense of who would be named who. After the boys were born, (pretty fussy on these details due to “The Mag” and extreme blood loss) Brad brought me pictures of the boys and we named them based on the pictures.
Now I couldn’t imagine them any other name than Henry Samuel, Brooks Layton, Clark Thomas, or Isaac Edward!
So that’s HOW they were named, check back shortly for Part 2……
Also, I’d love to hear experiences of how you named YOUR baby(ies)….so leave me a comment telling your story or better yet BLOG about it and let us know so we can check it out!
I have one son and his name is Clark Watson. I wanted to name him Clark Thomas because Thomas is my maiden name, but my husband wanted to name him after his grandfather whose middle name is Watson. I love his grandfather more than I love my maiden name, so I gave in. My husband and I both adore the name Clark. It’s not a weird name, but you don’t hear it very often. We’ve nicknamed him Superman since that’s what everyone says as soon as we tell them his name.
Me: His name is Clark.
Them: Oh, like Superman!
Me: Um, yeah, like Superman.
Sweet names! The night of September 11, I heard about a little girl traveling to Disneyland with her mother. Her plane crashed into the WTC. The photo they showed of her on television was a Christmas photo, and I knew our daughter was due around Christmas. The little girls name was Juliana McCourt, and we knew right away that if we had a girl, her name would be in honor of little Juliana McCourt. On December 7, 2001, our little Juliana was born.
I love looking at photos of your boys – SOOOOO adorable!
Before we were even married, my husband and I knew that we wanted to have three children total, so we used to discuss names on long roadtrips and by the time we got married, we had a saved list, in order, of three complete girl and three complete boy names (first and middle) so at our 20 week ultrasound when we found out it was twins (complete surprise!) we already had both boys named 🙂
Mine was easy – Jackson Ryan is named after my Grandpa Jack, and Ryan is his daddy’s middle name.
man, i wish it was that easy! coming up with 8 names was ridiculously hard for us! we looked at tons and tons of baby books! we rarely agreed on one…however before we knew what we were having, we wanted to name a girl savannah (old, southern, classy)..had no idea that everyone and their dog would name their daughter savannah within the next couple of months! ha…i looked up twin names and like how andrew and ethan sounded together…benjamin was our last name to come up with. i had liked it before, but for some reason, joe came back around to it and we settled on it. the boys middle names are named after our fathers and grandfathers… sav’s just sounded good to us:
Savannah Leigh
Benjamin Stephen (my dad & Gdad)
Andrew Paul (joe’s dad)
Ethan Joseph (joe)
That is so hillarious…I live in Louisville and didn’t have a clue where you were!!!
We didn’t have any “special” things coming up w/our names…we liked Shelby w/our first girl and then when I was pregnant again we decided to go w/another S…he ended up being a boy-Spencer Lee (Lee is my husband’s middle name). When I ended up pregnant (and surprised) when he was 6 mths old we decided to go w/another S-we had a girl, Sarah Beth. With our next son…we kind of had to go w/an S-we liked Stuart and we chose Michael-it is my dad’s middle name. W/our last boy…there’s no way out of the S’s now…my husband like Seth and we’ve always liked Garrett. Surely we are done…but who knows. We have wore out the S names!! We never planned on having five necessarily or I don’t think we would’ve kept going w/the same letter…oh well..it’s worked out! 🙂
I haven’t been blessed with children yet, and have no idea how we’ll come up with names. However, my name had a pretty fun beginning. My mother desperately wanted a Kimberly Anne and my Dad desperately wanted an Amber. So they both gave in a little and I got Amberly Anne. I love my name and I especially love that I have only met one other Amberly!
Your boys are too cute and I think they have great names as well. Have a good Tuesday!
I love to stop by your blog and check out your boys. They are absolutely precious! What miracles!! I have one son (so far) who is 15 months old. He is Kaden Marsh. Marsh is my husband’s middle name and his mother’s maiden name so we always said if we have a boy, he will get that name too. My husband actually came up with Kaden and requested that we spell it with a “K” because he is Kyle and then the two would have the same initials.
Our son is Mylo Josiah.
Mylo = Generous
Josiah = Fire of the Lord
After MANY hours in the “name books”, we had it narrowed down to a few we liked, Mylo being one of them. But we COULD NOT agree on something we both felt was “right”. I felt like the Lord began speaking to me that being “excellent in generousity” was a calling on our life. Then one weekend at church, the sermon was on just that! Our pastor was hitting the nail on the head of exactly what the Lord had been speaking to me in the previous weeks! A verse he shared was Proverbs 11:25 – “A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.” Perfect! Later that evening, my bible in hand, I sat down with my husband and layed it all out…that this baby’s name should be Mylo. And he said, “I think so!” We already liked the name Josiah, and thought the “umph” of “Fire of the Lord” went so perfectly with the “mildness” of “generous”.
Gavin was the name of a little baby I took care of in the nursery while in Nursing school. I liked it alot and Chad (my husband) liked it too. Lane is his middle name. So, it wasn’t hard for us to agree on his name, Gavin Lane Davis. Problem arises though, I’m having twins now, and we can only agree on one girl name, and we don’t even know if we are having a girl! It was the name we had picked out for Gavin (we didn’t know if he was a girl or boy). I think we have looked at every name in the baby name book, and he only likes 3, which i don’t like! It’s awful….We have finally decided not to discuss it again until we know for sure what we are having! So, if anybody has any suggestions about cute baby names (boy or girl) go over to my blog, and leave me a message!
I posted mine!
http://www.capeharttrips.blogspot.com
Let’s see…Claire Elizabeth…Tony and I both liked the middle name, but the first name was little harder to agree on. We had two names picked out for her and we decided to wait until we saw her before we chose. So you’ll have to wait until we have another girl to find out what the other name was 🙂
Xander was a name I heard on a TV show (I was named for a TV show as well..I had to continue the tradition!) and I LOVED it. The husband didn’t love it. Then I heard Alexander (the characters full name) and DH loved that. Kyle was my MIL maiden name and she lost her mom AND dad the year we found out we were pregnant…and she was an only child and we wanted to carry on her family name…so we have Alexander Kyle.
I am currently pregnant with our 2nd and we do not know the sex of this baby. For a boy we have picked out Izaac Jeramiah (call him Zac). I wanted a bible name and named after my side of the family this time. My brother is Matthew Isaac-Ray, so there’s where we got the Isaac. But my husband wants each child to have a nick-name. So that way they know when they are in trouble! HA!! For a girl we have picked out Alexis Rae (call her Lexi). Rae comes from my side of the family and Lexi comes from another TV show. 😉 Izaac Jeramiah doesn’t come from a TV show, but I really wanted a biblical name for a boy.
I love reading your blog and checking on your boys! I will be having our 2nd one here in a few weeks at St. Vincent Women’s. 🙂
Sooo.. it was super important to us to name our quads after family members. We did it sort of the same way though. We sat down with a pen and paper and just started talking about who we wanted to honor. It wasn’t too hard for us to come up with 8 names either…
Russ:
Russell John McNulty (after my grandfather and Conor’s Dad)
Ally:
Allison Ann McNulty (after Conor’s mom)
Molly:
Molly Lou Ann McNulty (after my grandmother)
Libby:
Elizabeth Dolores McNulty (afer one of my best friends “Libby,” Conor’s great grandmother “Libby,” and Conor’s grandmother “Dolores”)
I guess it was pretty easy!
XOXO
Gen
I have been stopping by your blog for awhile now and I love seeing the pictures of your boys. We have three boys 4 and under. My husband and I have always agreed on a girls name we could never agree on a boys name. Their first names were the ones we like at the time and we wanted their middle names to be family names, so we have
Michael William (william is my fil middle name)
Casey Leonard (my dad’s middle name, and my grandpa’s name)
Peyton James (after my husbands uncle)
My oldest son’s name is Clark. It is a family name on my side. My husband and I both love Clark’s name. I agree with Lindsey’s sentiment Clark is not a weird name, but you don’t hear it very often.
Now I will tell you that my Clark is a sophomore in college (where DID the time go???), but as he has grown up I have loved listening to him say his name on the phone or when he is introducing himself to people. It might seem silly that after almost 21 years I still get such pleasure from hearing his name, but I do. And the other fun thing is that when Clark calls me from college a picture of a Clark bar (candy bar) comes up on my screen. I don’t know if you can still get them, but we used to give out Clark bars for Halloween.
Jen, your babies are ADORABLE. I hope you and Brad enjoy every minute of them, because they do grow up far too quickly. I love all your other boys names too, but I have to say that I am partial to Clark! Thanks for sharing with us.
Now I feel like I have failed my hometown (well, almost my hometown) because I didn’t recognize it. Maybe I’ve been gone a little too long. 🙂
My pregnancy was so complicated, and my son was not supposed to make it. We looked for a name that meant miracle, we found that for a girl but not for a boy. We named him Samuel, which means God has heard (and we truly believe that God heard our prayers for Sam) His middle name is Lee which means: shelter from the storm, again we believe God protected him from the storm of a complication filled pregnancy.
I actually posted a blog about this same topic on February 24th, as we are trying to choose a name for our newest addition (due to arrive in August)!
Here’s the link:
http://seastrunks.blogspot.com/2008/02/baby-s.html#links
Our twin boys are named Jacob Alan and Caleb Luke.
interesting!! Thanks for sharing!
I have a question that I keep on wanting to ask……..
are your two little boys still sleeping in the same crib? Those precious pictures of them cuddled together is forever planted in my memory picture gallery!! Too precious!!
Thanks……heidi in IN
We used so many parts of family and favorite namesfor our quads; so here goes.
Thomas Charles(Tom): my favorite and then his fathers first name.
Jerry MacDonald: my dad’s name
Robert Vincent: father-in-laws first name and they were born on St. Vincent’s Depaul Day at St. Vincent’s
Shannon Cecile:(I wanted Sara Jane after a pateranl great grandmother; her nick name was Jenny and my dad said I reminded him of her) but my husband loved my maternal grandmother’s middle name and then my mother’s first name. We only had one daughter and he has been closer to my mom then his and she passed away several years ago. Jenny/Fishers,In
I dont have any children yet but I can tell you how I was named. My mother (for some strange reason) wanted my name to be either Treasure or Patience if I were a girl and Taylor if a boy. Being that my mom had to have an emergency C-section and was completely knocked out, due to several complications, my dad gave the nurse my name for the birth certificate. I obviously did come out a girl and my dad,thankfully, realized I would not have an easy life with either of those two names so he named me Talor. I like it, and it is no were near as bad as Treasure or Patience.
That’s really funny because I have a friend named Patience 🙂
My oldest daughters name is Kayla Rae. My mom wanted to name me Kayla but my dad didn’t like it so I was named Nancy instead. Rae is her dads name (Ray). My middle daughters name is Cambrie Jo. I saw the name Cambrie in a magazine and liked it and Jo is my middle name. We had a bit of a harder time coming up with my third daughters name. She wasn’t actually named until several hours after she was born although we found out she was a girl at our ultrasound. Her name is Cortlyn Marie. I liked the name Courtney but it seemed like there was tons of them out there and wanted something different. My MIL’s name is Linda so we changed Courtney to Cortlyn. Marie was my great-aunt’s name and also my husband’s grandma’s name.
Nancy L in IA
I just wrote a post on how I named by twins…
I linked it to your post also.
gibsontwins.blogspot.com
I have a difficult last name and grew up with a strange first name, so in picking my daughter’s name I wanted something simple and common but not overly common – so along came Jamie Lynn. I considered other names and debated over Megan and Britney, but Jamie was still the best choice.
KS Dallas
i always wanted to name my daughter after my brother, Hunter. but he informed me that he thought it would be weird to call a girl his name, i guess that’s true. in law school there was a girl i met very briefly whose name was Huntley and i was hooked. although i spell it Huntlee because lee is a family name (my uncle’s middle name) the middle name is Jane because it’s after my mom Janie and his mother’s middle name is Jane, so we have Huntlee Jane
We are thinking about names now!!! I am 7 weeks pregnant. So it should be fun!
Oh I LOVE names. Great post.
We have twins: Tatum Rylee and Chase Fenway. Fenway after, you guessed it: Fenway Park. I had a crush on a little Reilly that I babysat, hence Rylee, and Tatum and Chase just sounded good together to us.
Fun, fun, fun.
ok Jen, I posted on how our 2 were named.
Long time lurker, first time poster!
LOVE your blog! The boys are adorable.
My twins
Mitchell Thomas: Mitchell is my mom’s maiden name and Thomas is my father in law’s name.
Delaney Noi(rhymes with boy): Delaney is my sister in law’s maiden name. We wanted to find another Irish last name to go with Mitchell. And Noi is my mother in law’s name(she is from Thailand).
Reading all these are great. I always love to hear how people name their children. There is almost always a story behind it. Thanks for sharing!
Our twins:
Sarah Nicole – Sarah was named after my sisters. Sarah was the name of a baby my mom miscarried between my sister and I. Nicole is my younger sister’s name. We had a girl’s name picked out before we even knew whether we were having a girl.
Jacob Theodore – The middle name came after my husband’s dad who passed away several years ago. Jacob was just a name we both liked and finally agreed upon…only about a month before he was born!
The funny thing was…we didn’t go out of our way to have ‘matching’ names with our twins…but when we said it out loud…”Jacob and Sarah” (From the bible) we realized that had significance to it. We are always asked if that’s why we picked it. Not really, but were glad when we realized it!
Hey Jen- It’s Carrie. Well, we do things differently and have two middle names for our boys. Brett Thomas Madison and Luke Andrew James. Brett- George Brett of Kansas City Royals, Thomas was Jason’s grandpa’s first name and Madison was his other grandpa’s middle name. Luke- I just liked since Jason picked Brett, Andrew is Jason’s middle name and James is my grandpa’s first name. Mostly family names which I love. They have meaning behind them. I really don’t know what we would do though if we had another boy!! Two more middle names!! Oh no!!
Well…it took us forever to settle on names we both liked and we didn’t share the list with anyone. We actually didn’t even name the babies until after they were born. We finally settled on James Andrew, Elizabeth “Ella” Garrett & Cameron Grace.
Lydia Marie is our oldest, I just loved the name Lydia and Marie is my middle name and my mom’s middle name.
James was a name we just both loved, he was either going to be John Andrew Jr. after his dad and we would call him Jack, James Garrett (my maiden name) or James Andrew. But, as soon as we met him he was just James Andrew and that was that. It also worked as a tribute because my father’s best friend passed away just as I found out I was pregnant and his name was James (though he went by his middle name which was Michael)
The girls were far trickier, we just couldn’t get their names and went back and forth forever. We wanted to use family names, but only agreed on a few.
John’s favorite Aunt, who was really more like his grandma, was named Elizabeth (though everyone called her Betty) and he really wanted to use that. So after a lot of trial and error we decided on Elizabeth with the nickname Ella. John didn’t really like the name Ella, but when she was so tiny I just thought Elizabeth was too big of a name for her. I wanted something small and eventually he agreed. Garrett is my maiden name.
Cameron was by far the hardest name to choose. She had such a struggle with life in the beginning so we wanted her to have a strong name and John just adored the name Cameron for a girl. I liked it, but really thought she was more of a Grace (which is her middle name – John’s mom’s mom). Eventually we agreed on it and I just think it is perfect now and love her name!
We are expecting number 7 next week, so we have used 14 names! URGH!
Mathias Neil (Mathias b/c we liked it from Bible, Neil hubby’s middle name)
Phineas Cade Phineas from the Bible, Cade from Cade’s Cove in Gatlenburg
Gordon Eli Gordon from an album title and Eli from the Bible
Eden Claire Eden from the Bible (see a PATTERN YET? 🙂 and claire just fit nicely
Malaki Zion We knew we wanted a Malaki and we passed a sign for Mt Zion in Ohio and said ‘THAT’S IT!!”
Rhea Salomae Rhea from the movie Solaris and Salomae was the woman that went to annoint Jesus body at the tomb (only HE WASN”T THERE< AMEN!) And this baby will either be Ezra Koen or Esther something or other. But we are feeling like this is a boy 🙂
How’s that for a list 🙂
Amanda in Ohio
Mama to 6 sweet kids (one of which we will meet next week!)
Long time lurker, first time poster. I love your blog and the opportunity to participate.
Your boys are adorable too. 🙂
Our oldest is Kayleigh Nicole – Kayleigh was named after the song in the 80’s by Marillion. We knew when we were dating that we liked the name, just took 10+ years to use it.
Our middle child is Kelsey Danielle. Kelsey was number 5 on my list of 10 names and number 6 for my hubby. Danielle was number 6 on my list and number 5 on my hubbys. It just sounded better with Kelsey first.
Our last one is Keaton Logan. We really struggled with his name and didn’t even have a K name picked out (we didn’t purposely name them all with K’s) but when we couldn’t make a decision our oldest one threw out Keaton as a name she liked and it grew on us too. It is a little different and was not as common as Logan would have been.
First off, LOVE the story about the names. I often wonder the process many parents choose in naming thier kids…
Second, mine is a long story… I will try to do an abreviated version here and then do a real one on my blog.
I have 9 children, 5 adopted & 4 biological. We chose the names for all of our children.
We actually adopted the first 2 together, the next two together and then the final one separate. So, with each adoption I had to come up with the names. (there really is a WAY more indepth story)
Anyhoo, I then had 2 biological children in between the adoptions, thought we were done & then were surprised with our 17 month old twins.
Our kids are named:
David Jacob (14), David for an uncle
Stephanie Michele (13), Michele for my sister
Gabrielle Ann (13), Ann for me
Alexander Joseph (10), Joseph for my dad
Edward George (aka Teddy) (9), George for his Godfather
Henry Charles (8), Charles for my grandfather
Nathaniel Keith (6)Keith for my husband
Emma Helene & William Thomas (17 months), Helene for my great grandmother & Thomas for my BIL
I know, sheesh!, I take up a lot of space in my replies. sorry! 🙂
I’ll post the full story tomorrow.
We did not decide on a name for our son until 2 weeks before he was born. I knew what I wanted to name him, but had to convince my husband 🙂 So we tossed around TONS of names and ended up with Jackson Robert. We call him Jack! We knew that we wanted his name to have significance to us. So, my adopted grandfather was jack and he was my favorite man in the whole world. My husband wanted him to have another option as he got older so we added the “son.” Then, Robert was my husband’s grandfather and uncle. Since it took us forever to firmly decide on the name…we didn’t tell anyone until after Jack was born. That was a fun surprise. Next time maybe we won’t find out what we’re having ahead of time. But, we already have another boy name that’s pretty certain!
Fun post Jen!
Blaine and I leaned more towards non-traditional names mainly because our last name is Paul.
My son is Logan Caldwell Paul. I have to admit that we went through the lists a dozen times and could not agree on anything. Then one day Blaine and I were watched XMEN and when he said his name was Logan we both turned to each other and said “That’s a good name!” Caldwell is my maiden name.
My daughter is Brynn Ellery Paul. Brynn is just a name that we both really liked and so was Ellery. We tried to very hard to find a family name that went with Brynn but just did not have any luck. As an example…my middle name is Lynn and it’s been used a lot in my family…Brynn Lynn…um no.
Thanks for sharing!
Stacey Paul
Talking about names is so much and I like hearing about how others have chosen names.
Here’s mine:
http://joinourjourney.blogspot.com/
We have had to pick names twice. Girl was easy for us, and it was much harder to finally decide on a boy name.
So we have:
Caroline Elizabeth- Elizabeth is my middle name.
and
John Grayson- John is my husband’s name, Grayson is a family name on John’s side (his grandmother’s maiden name and his dad’s middle name. We call him Grayson.
The reason we had such a hard time choosing Grayson was that it had already been used in his family, and we didn’t want to step on his cousin’s toes (both boys are Grayson Harrod), but in the end, we decided to just go with the name we loved. And they were so cool about it!
It is so much fun reading how everyone named thier children! I put ours on our blog:
http://www.calonderfamily.blogspot.com
Trista
I love seeing your updates. We had the middle names picked our first after my father and my husband’s grandfather. Since they are both the same number of letters, I wanted the first names to also have the same number of letters (I’m an accountant, can you tell?) We decided on Owen William and Evan Braxton. Evan was our baby who struggled the entire way and we picked his name for him because it means God is good. Owen just seemed to fit with Evan.
My daughter, Bailey Kaye, was named after my husband’s grandmother (her maiden name was Bailey) and my mother (her middle name is Kaye.)
We are expecting a baby boy in May. His name will be Campbell Clark. My husband liked the name Camp, but I thought that was somewhere you go during summer! So we went with Campbell and may call him Camp as a nickname. Clark is my husband’s dad and grandfather’s name.
I love that we were able to honor our family members with both children.
I’m a little late on this, but here’s our son’s name “story”:
We knew we’d find out the sex of our baby because I’m impatient like that! I did want SOME element of surprise, so we were keeping the name a secret.
We tossed around many names & we actually have a list for each sex inside our Bible. I was reading a book & came across the name of the main character: Trevor, calling him Trey for short. I shot Ben this possible name & he really liked it, too. We didn’t realize that Trevor was an ‘old-fashioned’ name….
Trevor’s middle name, Calvin, is my husband (Ben’s) middle name and Ben’s grandfather’s name. I swore I wouldn’t use Calvin (because both men are onery–sp?? and when they’re in a room together, it gets crazy…). I didn’t know how I could deal with two Calvins in the same house!!
Anyway, Trey looked so much like his daddy on his U/s that I just couldn’t help it. Now, 4 months later, he is STILL spitting image of him!
Everyone was so excited that we used such a ‘traditional’ name when we didn’t even know! Now, Trevor is everywhere we look–movie & TV credits to the Masters!!!