this woman’s work

(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.