It took Richard and me a long time to agree on a name for Jacob. I, of course, wanted to go through all the name books and consider every single name that is in existence, while Richard wanted me to consider the name David.
That was his one suggestion.
It was exhausting; we would talk names every night for months, never agreeing. For the longest time I was set on Benjamin and Richard was stuck on David. We had come to an impass.
We got to Jacob in a sort of roundabout way. There was one other name Richard was willing to consider: Jack Bauer. But it had to be Jack BAUER. As in, Jack Bauer MacQuarrie. And omigod there was no way any child of mine was going to have that name.
I did like Jack though, but Richard wasn't willing to separate the Jack and the Bauer, and so while thinking about a variation of Jack, Jacob suddenly came into my head. Neither one of us had thought of it yet, but once we said it, we both knew Jacob was going to be our first child's name. For a couple weeks we had chosen Isaac to be his middle name. Jacob Isaac MacQuarrie, we thought we were done. Then one day Richard's mom called, and suggested that we use Andrew as a middle name. Everything seemed to click then. Andrew is my dad's middle name, and with the initials J.A.M., Jacob would be just like Richard's dad, Jeff.
When it came time to name Ryan, I think Richard was still worn out from thinking of a name for Jacob, so when we found a name we agreed on pretty early in the pregnancy, he settled on it, and would not budge. We named Ryan backwards, in a way.
Richard had always liked the name Walker, and I did too, but I couldn't picture it as a first name. I kept getting tripped up when I would imagine our future son learning to walk, and I thought I would sound ridiculous saying, "Walker is walking!" So we decided it would be his middle name. At that point, I thought it would be cute for this baby to have the same initials as Richard, since his middle name also starts with a W. We began going over R-names, and we agreed on Ryan. It was only after we chose it, that I realized what a perfect fit it was. Richard and I both have cousins named Ryan, and my Great-Grandma Miller's maiden name was Ryan...But, if I'm being totally honest, about 50% of my reasoning behind agreeing to Ryan, was simply because I thought RyRy was the cutest nickname in the world. I swear, Ryan will be 40 years old and begging me to Please. Stop. Calling. Him. RyRy.
Some people think my boys' names are plain, and, okay, fine. I will give you that. They're not unusual names or names you have never heard before. I suppose we could have named them Rainforest and Tundra or something along those lines, but for me, their names would be lacking. There would be no meaning behind them, other than a desire to be different from what society expects, and honestly, I already went through my rebel-phase back in high school. I didn't feel like condemning my children to a lifetime of mispronunciations, ridicule or strange looks, by giving them crazy names.
I love the names we chose for our sons, and the family connections within those names. I think it's important for them to be reminded of the family members who came before them, and that, not only do they have the MacQuarrie name to honor, but the relatives who inspired their first and middle names as well.
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