Naming Aidan James

I’ve written posts about naming our other two boys, and why we chose their names. Aidan is, of course, due the same about his name. Nathan and I struggled to agree on boy names. For each of the previous two boys, their names ended up being the only names we agreed on together. We’ve had a name that we liked for a girl for years. And while we can’t imagine not having three boys now, I think we were hoping that the last Lane baby would be a girl so we didn’t have to go through the name game again for a third boy.

But alas, God had bigger plans. And we were blessed with a third boy. This sweet little boy…

We agreed on his middle name first. I liked the name James as a middle name solely based on the sound of it. And that’s the whole story of why we picked James. Ha. No family history, no connection at all. Just thought it made a musical sound as a middle name.

I will never forget exactly where we were when we agreed to Aidan’s first name. We were sitting in the perinatal doctor ultrasound’s lobby waiting for our monthly sonogram of baby boy. We had some time to kill as we waited, and decided to revisit names again. I had a list of about five names I liked for the last boy on my phone, and as we took turns throwing out names, Nathan goes,

“How about Aidan?”
And I replied, “I actually have that name on my list.”
“No way,” he replied. “I don’t believe you.”

We had never both had the same name on our lists before.

I showed him my phone, where one of my options was already typed “Aidan James.”

Nathan looked up the meaning of the name Aidan. Little fire. And we both kind of liked that.

“Aidan James,” he said. “It kind of sounds like a movie star.”

It was several more days before we settled on the spelling of the name, but that didn’t take long either. It was the easiest first name we’d ever come to for the boys.

Our little fire turned out to be pretty darn cute.

2 thoughts on “Naming Aidan James

  1. Oh yes, my husband and I had a girl’s name picked out from day of the first pregnancy that we both loved but struggled so much with picking boy’s names for all 3; it was made worse by the fact that I was teaching at the time so some names immediately brought to mind someone else (and usually someone that was a major behavior problem in the classroom!).

    1. I will stand by it. I think boys names are haaaaard to pick. So funny that you guys also had a girls name picked out from the beginning!

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