What's in a name?

I discovered an easy way to know if a name is "trendy" or not. If it can be found embroidered on a pillow sham or towel anywhere in the Pottery Barn catalog, odds are, it's trendy. Who knew 5-6 years ago that people would fall in love with two of my children's names? Evidently, Lauren and Jack can be found on just about every page of the latest Spring catalog.

It's hard to come up with a good name when you're under pressure. We looked through every baby naming website we could find trying to come up with the perfect name for our newest little boy. Having three boys in a row makes coming up with the perfect name even harder. We became one of those parents who arrived at the hospital, having had nine months to come up with something, and not being able to agree on a name for our child.

Some names we could easily cross off of our list. The name Reilly for example. Some good friends of ours had a girl a few months earlier and named her Rilee. Two Reilly/Rilees in the same class at school and church would be a little silly. Lauren had two Taylors in her class last year. One was called the "boy" Taylor the other the "girl" Taylor. Besides, Reilly/Rilee/Riley/Rylee or any other spelling was too trendy. (See page 140 in the Winter '07 Pottery Barn catalog ).

Then there were the names I liked but were too "traditional" trendy. Names like Ryan, Alex or Nathan. Those were nixed by my husband. Not really sure why.

Then there were the silly "I-dare-you-to-name-your-child-that" names. Names that have either an apostrophe, a dash or start with "La" would fit in this category.

Since we knew our son would be born on March 21st which just so happened to be the first day of spring and the Vernal Equinox, I jokingly thought it might be an appropriate name. At least I thought I was joking when I mentioned the name to my husband. While he wasn't thrilled with Vernal or Vern, he actually did consider Equinox. Both were nixed by me. I'm sure I know why.

We finally narrowed it down to two. Ian or Colin. They were two names that were just different enough to not be considered Pottery Barn trendy or traditional trendy. And they were normal names unlike Vernal Equinox or LaWayne or even Noah-Lot. We surveyed people where ever we went to see if one name was more well liked than the other. We polled my on-line friends, our family and even my husband's co-workers at the work Christmas party. Heck, we even polled the nurses at the hospital! It was pretty much a toss up. They were of no help.

I decided that I wanted to "see" our little boy first before committing to a name. I guess deep down I was thinking that heralding angels would proclaim his name to me and I would say, "YES! That's IT!"

That didn't happen.

We knew we couldn't call him "boy" or

"The baby" forever. So, while still in my morphine state of mind, my husband's name choice won out in the end.

I'd like to introduce you to our newest member of the family.

Ian Kirk

Born 3/21 at 7:49am

7 pounds 15 ounces

20 1/2 inches

I suppose if we really wanted to be different and join the ranks of the Utah baby namers, we could have spelled it E-N. http://wesclark.com/ubn/