Where did we come up with that name??

It's kind of funny, I was reading  my sister's blog  and it seems like she got the same idea as I did. I was thinking that it would be fun to share where I came up with my kids' names. They seem to have a theme behind them so far, that not too many people know about! So I will share them with you!

Starting with Hayden. Hayden's name doesn't have much of a story behind it. Brian and I are dorks and started going back and forth with names the moment we found out I was pregnant. I used to want a Brian Jr. but before I was ever pregnant I had a dream that we had a baby boy named Brian Jr. and right after he was born he opened his mouth and told us he hated his name.

I have never forgotten that dream. Was that a vision? Or just too much spicy food? I will never know, but after I told Brian about it we decided not to have a Junior.

So when I got pregnant we started going through name books and websites and throwing names around. Brian liked Luke, from Star Wars. Luke Locksa??? I shot that one down pretty quick. He turned most of the names I liked down too.

One day we were looking at a website and he suggested Aiden. I liked that name a lot. But a girl in our ward just had a little boy named Aiden and I just didn't want to give our child a super common name. We talked about Jaidan, or Caden...when Brian said "Hayden" I said that's a name I would consider. We also talked about girl's names. The two I remember that we liked the most were Addison, and Scarlett.

I love this website. I didn't know about it when I was pregnant with Hayden but I have used it with the other two kids. Like I said, I'm not a fan of really common names. In 2007, when I was pregnant with Hayden, the name Aiden was ranked 54 and Hayden was ranked 71. Now I know about a billion little boys named Aiden, and I still only really know one other person named Hayden, and that is my sister's horseshoer's son.

So we settled on two names. Hayden for a boy and Scarlett for a girl. We found out in early fall 2007 that we were having a boy!!! So then it came time to decide on a middle name. I really wanted his middle name to be Merrill, after my favorite Uncle who had passed away suddenly when I was a teenager. Brian wanted to give him his middle name, Neal. It's also his Dad's middle name. We went back and forth arguing about this for quite some time. Finally I caved and decided to pass Brian's middle name to our oldest son. I came to this decision since both Hayden and Merrill are considered to be unisex names, I wanted people to see Hayden's name and know he was a boy. So I wanted his middle name to be masculine. I hope that someday I would have another boy to name after Uncle Merrill.

So Hayden Neal it was. It's not 100% true, but now I tell people that we came up with Hayden because in a roundabout way, it's related to Star Wars...since Hayden Christensen is the actor that played Anakin. It keeps up with the theme. All three kid's names have some sort of sci-fi or fantasy reference. Next up is Quinn! Stay tuned!