Stuck!

We officially know the gender of the little one I carry.  Well, I should say either we definitely know or this baby has quite a birth defect growing out from between it's legs!  Yep, it is a boy and now I am stuck.  We had a name agreed upon for a girl (Everyone in our house thought this baby would be a girl!) but we have no idea for a boy.  Now before people start throwing random names at me let me say we own a baby name book.  We can find 50,000 random baby names.  We don't want random baby names.  Our babies names are intentional and purposeful.  They are full of meaning.

We have a three prong (almost four prong) test for naming our children.  Number 1, and most important, is that we name our children after great people.  Catherine Viana was named after my grandmother and my great grandmother.  One of those women showed me how to love even the broken people of the world and the other left such a beautiful mark on our family that I have always wished I could have grown up knowing her.  Jacob Allen was named for my great grandfather and a great many men on his fathers side, including his own father.  I don't need to expound what a wonderful man I think my husband is but I will say that my great grandfather was a dedicated and hard worker (you can be sure to know that by the fact that the man managed to get and maintain 2 jobs during the depression.)  By naming my children after these people I am stating my hope that I can instill some of these great attributes into my kids.  I hope to have children who genuinely care for and love others, work hard, make family important and never turn their back on the people who need them.  This is important to me and it frustrates me to have people tell me to just give this up and name my children any ole name.  Why would I do that to the third child?  Don't you think that would tell this third child that they weren't worth the work of finding a meaningful name, but his brother and sister were?  Seriously people!

The second thing that is important to us is the meaning of the name itself.  Catherine means pure, Jacob is (obviously) a great man of the bible.  It isn't that the names have to be quite as strong as these are but they must not mean things that scare me for their future.  Sorry, but a name that means something like prone to sickness is really not going to OK for my kids!  Ha ha!

The last prong is connotation.  Did we know a great many people with that name that grated our nerves, or is their someone in history who lends a negative connotation to the name.  You know what I mean here, right?  I don't want a baby who shares a name with a serial killer or dictator!  In this last prong (or you could consider it a fourth prong) we also  think about how the names sound together and what the initials make.  I mean, who wants HIV as  their initials?  Or how about being named Harry Larry?  I am thinking either of those would lead to an easy opening for being picked on!

So, we know what the requirements are.  Now we just need to figure out a name!