What's in a name?

People have asked me how we decided on the baby names, if we chose names based on their meanings or how we did it.

Um, no.

We first decide on the name, and then check to make sure it doesn't mean something really weird or go against our beliefs.

The amazing thing is D and I actually agreed immediately on the names. A minor miracle in itself.

We normally like very different sort of names. I like weird names like Saskia and Tatiana, and he likes very English names like Rebecca (but that just doesn’t seem like names MY kids would have).

We both loved Luke until I got pregnant and said to D one day, “this child is not a Luke. He’s way too active and Luke feels like a gentler sort of boy” :) so that name was scrapped from our mental list.

When we said Connor, we both liked it. But ... I like all things Irish and wanted to spell it Conor, like the Irish do. But we live in South Africa, not Ireland, so he'd have to spell it out for people every time they asked him his name.

I had enough of that when I was growing up so did not want it for my kids too.

Also Conor means strong-willed which I do not have a problem with, since I'm also strong-willed , but Scottish Connor means brilliant, so we settled on that spelling.

As for Kendra, I love love love names starting with a K for girls. We liked a couple of others too like Kyra but eventually Kendra was the one we liked; it is Celtic and means greatest champion.

I recently "met" a Kendra through another blog. I loved her "about me" profile. Go read :)

So there you go.

Oh by the way, Connor was discharged on Thursday. Story to follow. We are doing well - 2nd night better than 1st :)