No-name No More

Sajid and I have decided on the name of our much anticipated son.

Ethan Sajid Whatley!

How did we arrive at that you ask? Well, I knew all along that I wanted to keep 'Sajid' as either the first or middle name of our son. I didn't want a "Junior", but the name 'Sajid' is too unique for it not to be carried on. I can't say that Sajid's heart was set on naming our son after him, but he never said he was against it. I would think it was an honor to have your son named after you. So, I said all that to let you know we only had to decide on one name since we already had the other - Sajid.

Ethan was one of our top 3 picks from the very beginning. The night I told Sajid I was pregnant, he spent some late night hours making a list of all the boy names that he liked.

[He didn't have to think about girl names because for more than a year now, we've said that if we had a girl, her name would be Lola Mae. We always knew we wanted to use Mae because it's both my great-grandmother's middle name and one of his grandmother's middle name. Lola - Sajid came up with that, and I liked it. So, now that I am actually pregnant and naming our children is no long just a thought, it became very realistic that the Lord might give us a son.]

The next morning, Sajid showed me his list, and I went through it and marked my favorites. Ethan being one of them. We quickly narrowed our top 3 down to 2 after we found out that the meaning of one of our other top 3 picks is thin and skinny. I don't want to say what that name is because I believe it is still a very beautiful name, and I certainly don't want to offend anyone. I've never been really huge on the meaning of names; however, when I saw that the meaning of Ethan is Strong and Firm and was the total opposite of the other name, it became very easy to cross one name out.

So, now we were down to 2 names. Even though many of you know the other name we really like, I'm not going to mention it in this blog. Sajid and I had a really hard time deciding between these two names. Both are Biblical names. And, neither of us could think of anyone with either name. For me though, the deciding factor was the flow of the name. See, if we went with Ethan, Ethan would be the first name. If we went with the other name, it would have to be the middle name because it is one syllable. I know many people go by their middle names, and I'm not one of these people who is totally against it. I just wanted to cut down on as much confusion as possible seeing that our son's other name is going to be Sajid. Just from listening to other people's experiences with this, it seems very likely that doctor's offices, school systems, and mail will consistently use the child's first name regardless of what the child goes by. And, truthfully, that wouldn't be so bad, but I have never met a single person who knew how to correctly pronounce S-A-J-I-D without someone having to tell them. Here again, I can't say this was Sajid's exact thought process, but it was mine, and he never disagreed. So, maybe it made sense to him too.

We went back and forth with our top 2 picks for a good while. It's quite funny looking back now. Each of us would ask the other, "so, what are we going to name our son?" at very random times. And, our decision came at a pretty random time. Sajid and I participated in our church Easter play last weekend. We had 3 productions: Saturday night, Sunday morning during the 8:45 service and the 11 o'clock service. It was during the waiting period between the two Sunday services - as we were in full costume (and makeup) sitting on the floor in the hall with about 20 other cast members and other church members in and out dropping off children in the nursery - that we both looked at one another and asked that question, "so what are we going to name our son?" We went over our thoughts again for both choices, and then Sajid said, "That's it. Ethan it is!" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. More so, as exciting as it was, I couldn't believe he and I in our own little moment amongst all these people and commotion were deciding on THE name of our son. He assured me that it was what he wanted. And, I couldn't have asked for a better moment. To me, it was like we were in a meadow all by ourselves excitedly discussing this major decision. Even though it wasn't, it seemed so private. It was a special moment to me that I'll never forget. So, Ethan Sajid Whatley it is! We did agree that if we were blessed w/ another son in the future, that we would use our 2nd pick at that time as long as no one close to us uses it before we get a chance to.