What's In a Name?

When we found out we were having a girl and told people, the next question was always, "Do you have a name?"  We did, but we weren't ready to tell people just yet.  Not sure why.  Probably in part because we wanted to be very certain before we told people since Brian and I wanted it to be completely our decision without others' opinions coloring our decision.  And, for me anyway, in part because that was just making it a little more real than I was ready for. 

We did tell people that we had a name in mind and about our process which garnered some chucking and some goofy looks.  Since I'm an accountant, there had to be an Excel spreadsheet for this and there was.  Before I was even pregnant, Brian and I came up with a list of boy names and a list of girl names and put them on the spreadsheet.  Then there was a column for Brian's rank and a column for my rank.  Hiding our columns in turn, we each ranked the names in our preferred order.  The combined ranking column took both of our rankings into account and gave us our top choices.  We then discussed some more and picked some middle names (family names) that went best with our top choices.  We then filed it away until much later. 

Once we knew I was pregnant we started to think back to the names that we remembered choosing and found that neither of us could remember our boy names but we remembered our top girl names really well.  An odd bit of foreshadowing as it turns out.  At an early high level sonogram, the doc said that she thought it was a girl, so we started trying out our girl names and ultimately decided on one.  Once we knew for sure it was a girl, we started privately using her new name.  Now, we've come to the point were we've told some people and are ready to tell anyone interested. 

Say Hello to:

Naomi Katherine Culp




ps. Katherine is Brian's grandmother's name for anyone curious about the family name.  She is very much missed.