What's in a name?

So I happened to be looking over the top 100 baby names of 2008. You can find that list here.

Go ahead and look. I'll wait...

I am most displeased by #9 on the female side. Thank you very much Grey's Anatomy! I blame you for all of the girls that will be in my son's class sharing the same name as him. I had that name picked out way before your show was ever thought up.

It was back in high school. I was sitting at Lanphier Park in Springfield watching the IHSA state baseball playoffs and there was a team there by the name of Addison-Driscoll. Ever since that day, the name Addison has been stuck in my head.

Fast forward say 7 years to Pete and I sitting around our first apartment in St. Louis, talking about what we would name our kids. I blurted out the name Addison Dace.

I came up with the middle name after having worked at a daycare for a year. There was a boy there who's first name was Dace and I thought that was a pretty sweet name. I also like somewhat unique and interesting names.

When I became pregnant in 2005, we knew that if it was a boy, his name would be Addison Dace. There were no backup names or girls names picked out. When we did receive confirmation that it was indeed a boy, we hosed his room down with blue paint and Addison Dace it was!

Now Amarah was a different story. We didn't even start talking about names until we found out she was a girl. We bought one of those lovely baby name books. I must have looked at that thing as many times as there were names in the book. We considered Keeley, Braelyn, Rylan, and Afton. I loved the name Olivia but it was just too common for me.

We had to come up with a way to narrow our options down. The list of names was just too overwhelming and we didn't have any clear front-runners. I was still waiting for the name to just jump off of the page and say "pick me! pick me!"

I finally said to Pete that we should just pick another "A" name. I've never been one for having a trend when it comes to naming our kids but it was the only way I could think to narrow the choices down. We both agreed and I started scrutinizing any and all "A" names.

Finally I came across the name Amara. I said it aloud to Pete. He liked it. I liked it. And that was it! Now the hard part was over. On to the middle name. We both thought a one syllable name would work best with her first name. I mentioned the name Jade. Pete didn't like it. I mentioned the name Grace and we both liked the sound of it. Plus, it went well with Addison Dace.

I will admit that I had a hard time getting the middle name Jade out of my head. For awhile, everytime I said her name in my head, it was always Amara Jade. And I had to keep reminding myself that wasn't right.

So now we had a name for our baby girl, but everytime I would type it out in an instant message to Pete, something just didn't look right. It just seemed liked something was missing. I decided to add an "H" onto the end of Amara and the rest, as they say, is history!

I don't think you will be seeing Amarah on the top 100 anytime soon, and that's perfectly fine with me!