(Seen over at Jenna’s livejournal)
Who named your child?: Brett and I named Noah. Pennie named Madison.
What did you name him/her?: Noah Ice. Madison Michael.
When did you come up with the name?: I can’t remember when we settled on Noah but it was probably somewhere around the end of the second or the start of the third trimester. We didn’t know if he was a boy or a girl so we had both a boy and a girl name ready. (Girl name was either going to be Sadie Friedman or maybe Ella Friedman. We were pretty cemented on Sadie but then while I was in labor listening to Ella Fitzgerald I changed my mind.)
Where were you when you came up with the name?: Probably at home in our apartment. We found out Madison’s name when we first met Pennie, which was at the German Village Max & Erma’s.
Why did you pick that name?: We picked Noah because we wanted him to have a gentle sounding name and I was rooting for a name from the Hebrew scriptures. (Brett voted down Eliezer so I named my hard drive Eliezer. Heh.) We rejected Simon and Linus and Milo (because we once owned a cat named Milo and my brother said, “If you name the baby that, I will tell him you named him after a cat that you gave away when you moved.”) I should have known that Noah would become mega-popular when every single person who heard the name loved it. If everyone loves your baby name then it will be used by everyone. Just be warned.
Back in my day, I’d never met a Noah who wasn’t Jewish so imagine my surprise when it became one of the most popular secular names ever. Plus since we homeschool, people sometimes assume we must be fundamentalist Christians what with the name and the homeschooling. I should have named him George.
Ice is my mom’s last name so he’s named for my mother.
Pennie picked Madison’s name after studying baby name lists; she just liked it. Michael is after her beloved brother who was named after her dad so Madison carries on her birth family tradition there.
Possibly related posts:
Ice? Cool. Glad you explained it.
I love the different ways that people arrive at names for their children.
And although George is a great name, I really like Noah.
I was rooting hard for Sadie as our daughter’s name, but neither my husband nor her first mom went for it. Hmph.
It’s so interesting to hear the process behind people’s names.
The commenting continues: remember the first time I emailed you, when I was listing everything we had in common, and I said that our children both have nouns for middle names, and then you said it was your mom’s name?
you may know some of this already – but figured i’d point it out anyway – noah in hebrew comes from the word root of rest, relief, or comfort (and the biblical character is named because of that, see genesis 5;29).
also – no’a (pronounced pretty similarly to the english ‘noah’) is a pretty popular hebrew girls name – appears in numbers 27;1 as one of the daughters whose claim to their fathers land caused moses to return to god ask about, and then modify, inheritance law to include daughters.
Chanie, I did know that! It’s one of the reasons we chose it — and then also Brett has an ancestor named Noah Webster. Guess what his brother’s name is? That’s right — Daniel Webster!!!
I gotta say, Ice is a damn cool middle name (pun!) . But seriously, it /is/!