What's In a Name?

An old post finding new life...one I wrote ages ago but never posted.

When Ben and I found out we were having a baby we pretty quickly decided we wanted a girl. This was a reversal for me, I'd always said that if I had kids I wanted boys, only boys. They just seemed easier (knowing what kind of a kid/teenager I was). I think we fixated on having a girl early just because the name came to us so quickly. I was attached to Flora which was my paternal grandmother's name and a name I find to be incredibly sweet. Ben didn't love it so it got assigned as a middle name.

From there we decided to make lists of boys and girls names we liked with each of us having the power to veto any name the other put on the list. We actually had quite a few girl names that we both liked but when Clementine went on the list, we knew that was the one. So very quickly we had named our daughter to be: Clementine Flora Thompson.

Then we found out we were having boy. Crap. (I say crap but what I really mean is: Yay! It's a boy!) For real, once we knew it was a boy we of course realized we wanted a boy all along.

Back to the drawing board... Our criteria for names turned out to be pretty limiting. For a first name the following needed to apply: a name based in nature, no bile names or religious names. (So I say "bile" but what I meant was "bible" but on the read through bile cracked me up so I'm leaving it. I think it's fitting since the thought of the bible causes bile. For me anyway. Some people love the bible. I'm not one of them.) That criteria ruled out a lot of names.

We leaned toward Forrest for a while and then one morning randomly looking at baby name websites online we came across Makai. It was the first name we both instantly liked.
In Hawaiian, Makai means "towards the ocean". It's used as a direction, as opposed to north or south they say either towards the ocean or towards the mountain. So it's like naming our kid North or East but whatever. We liked it. For short we'd call him Kai. Kai has a lot of meanings in different cultures all of which we loved. To name a few:
Hawaiian - Ocean or Sea
Scandinavian/Greek - keeper of the earth (kind of a big responsiblity for a little man)
Japanese - Ocean or paddle (Ben and his dad take a paddling trip in Canada every year with Kai to join them eventually)
Navajo - willow tree
German - safe harbor
Burmese - strong or unbreakable

At least those are the definitions the interweb gave us. And the interweb is never wrong.

Makai it was. Once that was decided a middle name was even harder. Joking around one day one of us, I'm not sure if it was Ben or me, suggested Barack. We laughed about it but it kind of stuck. He became Makai Barack as a joke for a while and then we started to consider it more seriously. We liked that it sound strong and we like Barack Obama. Like a lot. We kind of love him. I'm pretty sure Ben has a man crush on him. I certainly have a crush on him. He's super duper handsome.

Really we both find him to be ridiculously inspiring and have you seen his wife? That chic is hot and cool and strong. Anywho - he's someone we'd be proud to be named after.


The final decision was made this week with the arrival of a box from Amazon.com. My long awaited, pre-ordered copy of "Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to my Daughters" by Barack Obama. It took will power but I waited until Ben got home to crack the cover and standing at the kitchen counter we read the first page and fell in love with a childrens book. As avid readers and lovers of stories we were moved by this charming book that portrayed not only the diversity of our country but also the clear love this man has for his daughters.

So last night we decided to name our son after the 44th President of the United States, a US Senator, Nobel Peace Prize winner, best-selling author and loving father.

Makai Barack Thompson will be our sons name.

And we figure that when Makai hits his rebellious stage as we're sure he will. If, as the son of two liberal parents he decides to rebel by being a Republican we can say to him, "Be a Republican all you want, but your middle name is still Barack."