Say My Name, Say My Name

Hey all!  I guess I still have Beyoncé on my mind today – she killed it Sunday night! 

I’m linking up with Amanda over at My Very Own Modern Family today for her “What’s In A Name” Link Up.  I thought this was a fun link up idea, so thanks for hosting it Amanda!  And if you’re not a “Modern Family” reader head on over and check out Amanda’s blog. She has 5, count them FIVE, daughters!!!  And they all have such beautiful names!  I can’t wait to read how she came up with them all.

I’m going to start with my name.  I am named after 2 of my dad’s favorites from the 70’s.  My first name is after Erin Gray, an actress.  I love this picture of her, totally 70’s, totally what I would have tried to look like if I’d been around then.

And my middle names is Yvonne, after Yvonne Elliman. (Let me just help you out by letting you know Yvonne is pronounced ‘EEEE von’, not Ya von. ‘K, glad we cleared that up!)  She was a singer.  I’m a bit surprised my dad liked her so much, but whatever floats your boat.

So that’s how I was given my names, based on my dad’s favorites at the time. 

My oldest son’s name is Aiden Kinnick.  One Saturday morning, while I was working at the salon, Andy was home watching ‘Rick Steve’s Europe’ on PBS.  Rick was in Ireland, traveling down some country road.  They come upon a flock of sheep and their herder.  Rick yells out “What’s your name?” and the herder yells back “Aiden Devereux!”  Andy called me right away and asked me what I thought of the name Aiden.  At the time I wasn’t even pregnant!  But I liked it enough to put it on my imaginary list and it stuck.  Kinnick, well, if you’re a Big 10 football fan you might know where Kinnick comes from.  When we were pregnant Andy was going to the University of Iowa (Go Hawks!), plus he’s a lifelong fan of the Hawkeyes.  I saw in some paper that a couple named their twin boys Kinnick and Carver.  I told Andy, kind of like “cute, right?”, but not thinking we’d ever name our child after one of Iowa’s greats.  Well, Andy took it to heart and never looked back.  Oh, and Kinnick is after Nile Kinnick, the only Heisman Trophy winner in Iowa Hawkeye history.  He’s also a WWII hero.  They play his Heisman acceptance speech at the beginning of every Hawkeye home football game, it gives me chills every time I hear it. 

Okee dokee, that was a long explanation.  More wordy than necessary.  Ha ha!

Now on to my Brenner Bug.  While I was pregnant with him I hated every single name we thought of for him.  EVERY.SINGLE.NAME.  And you might not believe me, but every name made me literally gag.  Weird.  So delivery day came and we still didn’t have a name picked out.  When I was pushing I told Andy not to call the baby Brennan if it was a boy, I wanted to see him first.  So out he came, I looked at him and just felt like Brennan was it.  Today I love his name.  We still didn’t have a middle name since we didn’t go in having a first name.  I was really hoping for a girl and was going to use my Grandma’s name for the middle name (Louise).  Well, it was a boy so now what?  Then my genius husband came up with the idea of using my Grandma’s Angel in Heaven’s name (Ricky Joseph was born 6 weeks early and didn’t survive).  I didn’t want to use Ricky, but Joseph seemed to fit perfectly.  So we were still able to honor Grandma after all. 

There it is, how we named the boys and where my name comes from.  I have no idea about Andy, I will have to ask his mom sometime.

And now to plug my own link up I’m hosting next Thursday, on Valentine’s Day.  I hope you’ll join me for sharing our Love Stories!

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Have a great one!

Erin