What's in a name?

That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet ~ Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 1600.

One of the most common questions that both my husband and I got while I was pregnant was "do you have a name picked out?" Of course, this was after we had gone to the ultrasound appointment and were told we were having a little girl. At first my response was "not yet but we do have a list." At the time I thought that having many options for a name for our little girl was a good idea but I didn't realize how much anxiety this list, even a narrowed down list, would create.

We probably had, at the most, 15-20 names that we really liked and eventually we were going to sit down and were going to narrow down the list to 2-3 names. Both Kris and I agreed that we wanted to wait to pick a name until we could see her but by the time that we were heading to the hospital a month early, we had only narrowed it down to four names. Yet before I get into the name choosing ceremony, I think a little background information about how our family chooses names is in order.

In November of 2009 my parents decided that it was time to get another dog. (I know I am comparing naming a dog to naming a baby but you will see why it was so hard for Kris and I to settle on a name until we absolutely had to.) My dad sent out an email to the entire family including Kris and I, Kate and her boyfriend Chris (yes two K/Chris' in the family, easier for my dad to remember) and my mom asking for any suggestions for dog names. There were pictures of the puppies so we could kind of get an idea about names for the newest Stone addition. We were to send in our suggestions via email by the end of the week, Dad would compile the list and send out the potential names. About a week later we received another email with the list of names and we were to choose our top five, email those back and we would repeat the process again. We did this twice more, choosing our top three and then our top one. Needless to say that this was an extremely involved process, with many emails that contained jokes, threats and innuendos. In the end we decided on naming the chocolate lab Porter and went from there.

Now back to our baby. Each and every time some asked the "name" question, I would rerun the above scenario in my mind and become really anxious because I want certain that we would have to go through something similar to name our baby and it would be ten times the process of naming a dog.

About a week before Paytan was born, Kris and I were talking about names and we came to the realization that both of us have grandmothers named Patricia. At this time we had four first names picked out: $Audrey, Lucy, Paytan and Elliot. Audrey has the dollar sign next to it not because we wanted her to be like Ke$ha but because my dad really liked that name and said "now, if you go with Audrey there might be a little more money earmarked in my will for her. I'm just saying." Lucy was an option because one day Kris and I were in the car and we both realized that we didn't have any qualms with Lucy, so on the list it went. Paytan and Elliot were also options and were kind of emergency backup names just in case the ultrasound tech made a mistake and Paytan actually ended up being a boy.

We went through the list of first names with the middle name of Patricia and it seemed to work with each of the options. WE HAD MADE OUR FIRST NAME DECISION! Even though it wasn't a first name, it was part of her name that we had agreed upon and we were very happy that we could pass on the namesake of Patricia to our little girl.

Here is a picture of my Graymo and I when I was little:

Here is a picture of Kris' grandma Pat:

Ok, now let's get down to the business of the first name. Like I said before, we had the four options of Audrey, Lucy, Elliot and Paytan. For the first two days of her life, Paytan was actually referred to Er Baby Cook on all official hospital paper work because Kris and I were recovering from the delivery and hadn't really thought about a name.

On day three, Kris and I were sitting in our hospital room and were looking at our baby. I said "we really need to pick a name." We both looked at her, lying there peacefully in here bassinett, and we both agreed that she didn't look like an Audrey or a Lucy, two of the names that were more towards the top of the list. Then we started to throw the options of Elliot and Paytan around. Elliot kind of fell by the wayside in the natural flow of the conversation and we fixated on Paytan. "What do you think of Paytan?" I said. "I like it" said Kris. "Ok, well then how do we spell it?" I said. Then I immediately got out a piece of paper and began to write down Paytan with as many different spellings as I could think of: Peyton, Payton, Paytin, Paeton, Peighton, Paytan and I think there were about ten other options. I write in cursive all of the time because my printing looks like a second grader's handwriting and as soon as I wrote her name Paytan I knew I had found the right option. Looking through the list I said "well I think I found one that I like." "Which one?" asked Kris. "I like P A Y T A N because I can picture it written on a pair of Mickey Mouse Ears" I said with a smile.

Kris smiled at me and I smiled back. "We made another decision about our daughter" I said. We were really excited about the name and couldn't wait to post it on facebook.

Once we started to tell people what her name was, the nicknames began to flow. For me, her nickname is piglet, which actually came before her actual name. When she first was handed to me after she was born, she was a little stuffy and made little grunting noises. I said "she sounded like a little piglet" which for me stuck as a nickname. For my mom, she kept call her peanut, which was a nickname that was already taken by Katelyn when she was little, so that wasn't an option. Some of the other nicknames have been peggles, princess pei pei, pay, snuffalufagus, butter bean captain crunch pants and so on. I am sure that other nicknames will surface but for now my little piglet is just fine with me. Oink oink baby!