The name we've chosen for our little guy is Samson Alexander Neeley.
Samson: Sun or Service (Hebrew)
Alexander: Defender of the people (Greek)
Alexander is after daddy (Brad's middle name), and because I love the name and have always wanted to name my boy Xander... Alexander is pretty close, right?
Samson.... well, it's a long story...
Brad and I were one day on a road trip and (this was probably while pregnant with Ruthe before we found out we were having a girl) trying to think of a boy name. We had a list of boy and girl names that we made while engaged, but decided we didn't really love any of the boy names anymore and wanted a new one. (the girl names have all survived.) We wanted a perfect boy name, since we have this strange superstition that we'll only get one boy. (My parents have 3 girls and 1 boy, Brad's parents had 1 boy and 1 girl, one uncle had 8 girls and 1 boy, and another uncle had 4 girls and 1 boy... see the pattern? Everyone only gets 1 boy!) Anyways... we always wanted Alexander, but we couldn't come up with names that sounded good as a middle name after Alexander. But, Alexander sounded GREAT as a middle name, so we started throwing out names... after an hour (or more) we had digressed to ridiculous names and were throwing things out loud that we had no intention of ever using. Like:
Alexander the Great Neeley
Evgeni Alexander
Crosby Alexander
Sidney Alexander (notice the Penguins hockey theme???)
Alexander Ovechkin Neeley (or just a hockey theme? we love our hockey!)
Alec Zander
others obscure Bible names, random names of food (mocking some pop celebrities), over-the-top Mormon sounding names, or trying to make dumb acronyms with the initials.
Well, among the Bible names we threw out was Samson Alexander Neeley. We both laughed and continued on our mockery of names, but after a few more hours of ridiculous, we-are-sick-of-driving chatter, we both looked at one another and said something like, "Ok, this sounds crazy, but the name Samson is kinda starting to grow on me. I don't like it, but ... maybe I do?" And we laughed and tried to forget it. But a few days later, we both started talking boy names again, and we still kept thinking about the name Samson Alexander and couldn't get it out of our heads. Eventually, we decided that we actually love the name, despite how little thought we gave it at first. Samuel and Samantha are family names, too, so another Sam would fit right in, but Samson is distinctive enough to be unique.
So, there... Samson Alexander Neeley.
Now the question is: Will we cut his hair? ;-)
And: when did we become the kind of people whose kids all have Old Testament names? This was never our intention, but... we like it.
2 comments:
When you mentioned that all of your kiddos have Old Testament names I was like, ... "Wait? Really?" I think you chose the perfect "bible names" because when I hear them my first thought isn't ... BIBLE! He he he. You know what I mean?
I know what you mean, Emily! They aren't names that make everyone immediately think of the bible, and we actually really like that even though they are all bible names, they aren't the ones that are commonly used when people want to name their child after someone in the bible. And it's not because they are not good people... their stories just aren't as popular.
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