Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The name game

Alaina's name. We always get asked about our kids names and it's been no different with Alaina's. It's kind of fun to tell our kids' name stories, so here's Alaina's:

My brother Jesse moved back home in September from Hawaii, where he'd been living for the past couple of years. We were still stumped on a name for the baby, so I asked him to make me a list of Hawaiian names he liked. One of the names was Kalani and I kind of liked that, but it wasn't quite right. So I toyed with it until I had Kalaina and Brice and I both liked that name, but it sounded a little to hard with that K at the beginning for it to be perfect. Oh, I was also looking for a K name and I would pair it with a T middle name so that we could call her Katie for a nickname. Silly, I know, but that's what I wanted. Anyway, I dropped the K on Kalaina and had Alaina, which I liked also, but then I didn't have the Katie option. Until one day Ryker was playing and he started saying something about Katherine. I wasn't sure where he'd heard it or what he was referencing, but I liked it as a middle name to go with Alaina and it would give us the Katie option. Perfect! As soon as I said it out loud, I was pretty sure we had a winner. So I called Brice and asked him what he thought and he liked it too, so our baby had a name. We still considered Kalaina for a while but I only liked it some of the time. Incidentally, I had a friend growing up in Canoga Park named Alaina (that's probably where I got the spelling) that I got to know again when we both ended up at USU. She found me yet again online just a few days after we decided on the name! Coincidence?