what's in a name?

Recently, while inpatient at the hospital, one of my nurses was named Babe Ruth, & like the candy bar she was super sweet. Hahaha. Cheese ball, Lisa! :o)  Anyhows...  of course her name led us all to a conversation about unique names... which seems to be all the trend in Hollywood.

Chowder with the ladies at recent high school reunion

My friend Gibby, whose nickname is Chowder, by far had the most interesting stories. He once knew someone named Mister.... named Mister because his mother wanted him to have respect. I thought that one was kind of cute. His best example though was that of a young mother who gave birth to twins. During their hospital stay, a curious nurse asked the new mom if the names she chose for her twins were family names... since they were so different. No, the girl replied, they (meaning the babies) had already been named when she (the mom) first went to the nursery to visit them. The babies were named Babya and Babyb… as in Baby A and Baby B. Oh boy... grade school must have been rough... well at least they had each other. :o)

And although we may point blame at our parents for many reasons throughout our life, in these cases, if your name sucks a@#, it clearly is your parent's fault. Like my dad's example... Mr. Hogg expecting a little girl debated if he should name her Ima. At times though, the name may come innocently from inspiration somewhere, but ends up being a poor choice. My mom's example... a child with the name Nofume. Must have been inspired by a sign on the wall. No fume means no smoking in Spanish. At least that one comes with some educational advice... intentional or not.

Well... back on Halloween when we found out the baby's sex, Juan and I had a long ride up to San Francisco. Along the way we looked for inspiration along the drive... in the signs we saw to the towns we passed. I don't know, for some reason Tehachapi just didn't seem a good fit.. along with many others.

In the end...we decided on Owen Armando. Let's hope he likes it as much as we do.

Owen was always one of our top boy names (back with our first son), so his name also connects him to his brother, Rylan Cruz. And like Rylan, we wanted Owen's middle name to be Latino. We decided on Armando... after Juan's cousin who passed away in November 2012 in a tragic car accident. Despite being cousins, they were more like brothers as they grew up in the same household and were the same age. We couldn't think of a better way to honor him. Later... in doing research on the meaning of names, I came to learn that Armando in Spanish/ Portuguese/ Italian is the equivalent to Hermann in German... which happens to be my father's name... thus making it extra special.

Armando

   



Owen, according to Babynames.com, means desire born. How appropriate!

lots of love...
little lisa... booor-ing (name) lollipop


P.S. Juan doesn't like his first name... which is José. Juan is actually his middle name!

Fun Fact:
Lisa means God is my Oath
Joan means God is gracious. So true.