What's in a name?

So you might have noticed that I've settled on NB for newbie's blog name.  We really didn't decide on his name officially until several hours after he was born.  His red hair caught us so much by surprise that we actually reconsidered some names we had crossed off our list earlier on.  Since we didn't know his name ahead of time, he has been affectionately know in our home as "Newbie" (which LO sometimes said as "Doobie"...after a cousin he likes a lot), "Newbs" and "baby brother."  In fact, the three of us still call him those things on occasion and I like that.  I hope that using "NB" here will help pay homage to those nicknames in case they don't stick around long.  

As with LO, I hope to not use NB's given name here on the blog.  As a result, I won't be posting it here, but I'm pretty sure most of my readers already know it.  If you do not, please let me know and I'll try to fill you in another way.  What I can report is what NB's name is NOT.  The names we considered most were Harrison, Anderson, and Porter.  We really likes Porter, but after spending about 45 minutes giggling over the fact that his initials would be "PN" (say that out loud if you don't get it), we decided his classmates would have a field day and we just couldn't do that on purpose.  Other considerations were DH's family's tendency to give nicknames that end in "ee" (Mac-ee, Doobie, Winnie, Ellie).  LO's name is not conducive to a nickname that ends in "ee" (you can make one, but it's a girl name), so we wanted to try to give NB a name that would work that way.  I have always wished I had a nickname, so having some option in that regard was important.  "Porter" just didn't meet those requirement either, though, frankly, neither does the name we chose.  We had actually chosen Harrison as the front runner (hoping for Harris as a nickname rather than Harry), but it was hard for me to let Anderson go.  Then...LO started music class in January.  On the first day we met this little darling, and I loved his name.  

NB's first name is from this friend of LO's in music class.

I was so excited to share it with DH, but DH took a while to warm up to it.  A week or so later, DH was gung ho over it, and I was struggling with it.  We had decided early on to use my dad's name as NB's middle name.  All our other options worked well with it, but this new name just didn't.  Ultimately, we decided to use my dad's middle name, which he also shares with his dad.  The more we tried it out, the more we liked it.  Still, I just wanted to see NB before I was ready to choose it over Harrison. 

NB's middle name is from my dad and grandfather.

Then, NB was born with fair skin, red hair, and light eyes.  We were so surprised, but so in love with that.  Suddenly DH was willing to consider Benjamin as a name.  I had liked Benjamin (calling him Bennie or Benji for short) as it was also a family name, but DH just didn't see the name going with a dark haired, olive skinned kiddo.  When NB wasn't, then DH brought it up again.  We also, jokingly, thought about Liam or something similarly Irish/Scottish sounding.  Finally we went back to our old favorite because we felt a baby as unique as NB was starting out to be deserved a name that was also more unique.  So, hours later, DH and I settled on NB's name.  We hope everyone else is loving it as much as we do.