Her name.

My friend Randi posted Nameberry's Top Names of 2011 on her blog, wondering how her son's name ended up on the list. He has a very distinguished name and I don't know any other babies with the same name.

I had to investigate and see if Evelyn's name was on there. I had a hunch that it might be, since my mother-in-law sent me a similar website when she was only a few months old. I was bummed to see her name was on the list. Well, her name is on this list, too. #44.

Evelyn's name is not a family name; neither of us know any relatives of ours that have the name Evelyn. It was not the name we had chose as soon as we found out she was a girl. In fact, she didn't have a name until twenty four hours after she was born.

I saw the name Evelyn on some baby name website about three weeks to a month before she was born and texted Dan, "How about Evelyn?" I remember vividly; I was sitting outside on our little step by our front door. He texted back something like, "I like it". Then I thought...oh no, I don't know if I like it. We didn't make a solid decision on it either way.

I thought that since we couldn't agree on a name while she was in the womb that a name would just jump out at us as soon as she was in this world. We'd take one look at her and say, "Oh, her name needs to be ------." Um, yeah, didn't happen that way. I was so embarrassed when a nurse or a corpsman would come in and say how beautiful she was, then ask her name. "Ummm...she doesn't have one, yet."

Dan went to go fill out his PTAD paperwork (his time off paperwork for her birth) and one of the Lieutenants asked what her name was. He said she didn't have one yet and retold the story to me when he got back to the hospital. I felt pressured;  we can't leave the hospital without a name for her. Technically I think we could've but I wanted her to have a name, we just weren't sure what.

We came back to the most recent name we had discussed...Evelyn. Okay, Evelyn it is. It didn't flow off my tongue for some time and I wondered, when she was little, if that was the name meant for her. Now she's definitely Evelyn and there is no other name for her but at first I wasn't sure.

I have a list in my journal of some names we had tentatively agreed on when we were still living in California. We sat in Barnes&Nobles for hours, pouring over a baby name book. Here are the names we liked (notice Evelyn is not on it):

• Dalia
• Wren
• Caroline
• Delia
• Liesl (this one was a joke)
• Elsa
• Rosemary
• Mabel
• Nora
• Pearl
• Lydia
• Hazel

Other names not on that list include Violet, which was my #1 idea when we first found out she was a girl (my Grandma's name is Violet). Violet didn't feel right, though. We also talked about Mari and Isla. For a week or so I thought Isla was the name but it still didn't really sing to my heart. Oh and Lena ... I thought Lena would be cute since we're both from Minnesota but Dan thought she'd be the butt of Ole and Lena jokes if we ever moved back. So no Lena.

I don't know if I ever mentioned it to him, but I liked Genevieve. I liked that if we named her a name that started with G, her initials could be GEM. Our little Gem. See, she had her middle name within two weeks of us finding out her gender. So we knew her middle and last initial and were just waiting on figuring out the first initial. I also was fond of Vivian / Vivienne.

I don't remember who I was talking to several weeks ago but they asked how we came up with the name Evelyn. They flat out asked if it was a family name because it was a "Grandma" name -- in fact, it was the lady's Grandma's name. I just laughed and told her the story; it didn't have any special meaning to us, we just liked it and yes, it conjured up the idea of an older lady.

It seems that many of the names we considered are gaining popularity. Violet is #2, Isla is #4, Hazel is #29, Nora is #35, Genevieve is #43, Wren is #46, and Lydia #56. And still there are a few more names on there that I remember us commenting on.

I didn't want Evelyn to have a "popular" name. I also didn't want her to have a totally unique name, like Aspen (which I do love, so I am not bashing it).

So now y'all know the trials we went through trying to decide on a name for our little Schmoopy. Is your baby's name on the list for 2011? If it is, how do you feel about it?

In other news, Evelyn is nine months old today. Ahhh. Her pictures will come as soon as I can find my memory card that isn't full. She has her well baby visit tomorrow morning, bright and early at 0730. I can't wait to share all the new things she's learned and done in her eighth month.