One of the hardest things about having a baby was picking the perfect name. For my wife and I picking a name was a multi-month process. Personally I thought it was amusing enough of the story to want to blog about it. We didn’t really begin to discuss means that all until we knew we were having a girl. That wasn’t until late March. We both decided we didn’t want to know the sex of the baby. I always said it’s a surprise when you find out, see you don’t need to wait until the baby is born to be surprised. One of the added bonuses of knowing the sex is making it easier to pick a name. I cannot imagine going through that process having to have two choices, a boy and a girl name.
Once it was a girl who started out in earnest to come up with a list of names we like. That didn’t last very long when my wife was questioning my list. Instead of both of us coming up with a list of names we liked a friend or two of mine suggested that I simply retain veto power over names that MC comes up with and likes. I agreed to that and MC began collating a list of name she liked. To start with she had three general criteria she was looking for. She wanted to find a name that wasn’t super popular, we generally traditional (aka not some oddball new name), and if possible be an Irish name. I did not mind popular names but if we found a non-popular name network I was cool with it. I agreed with her about not having some oddball name, so traditional was okay with me. I also thought it was a great idea to look for an Irish name especially since the baby would have a very Jewish last name. I thought it was a good idea to have the heritage of both parents represented in her name if possible. What was funny to me about her initial list of names was the generally did meet her own criteria. Most of the names were very popular ones that were in the top 10 or top 25 popular lists of the past decade. I think we had three of the top five most popular names on our list at one point. All of them were at least classic names but most of them were not Irish in origin.
At this point I already dropped hints and suggested the top names I liked. My two favorites (Zoe & Teagan) were rejected. I had always liked the name Zoe. I think one of my father’s friends had a child that he named that I always thought it was an awesome name. It was always in the back of my head to the possibility if I ever had a girl. Unfortunately Zoe was the name of one of MC’s college friends daughter, as well as being the middle name of my youngest niece. Teagan is a name that I got from another Scott that I work with whose oldest daughter is named that. His wife is Irish so he named all of his kids very Irish names. I always liked the name and suggested it when the time came for us to pick girls names. MC rejected it out of hand. I think she just thought it was to non-standard or something like that.
Since my top two picks were discounted we went through the process of whittling down the list of names MC came up with. Over a month or so we were able to narrow down the list to three or four contenders. There were one or two that I really liked and wanted to use, and MC also agreed on those pics. As we were narrowing it down MC decided to buy a huge book of baby names even know we’ve been looking extensively online. MC then proceeded to read every girl name out of the book. It took a while. I was surprised when nearing the end of the book MC asked me “How about the name Teagan?”. My immediate reaction was “are you %^*$^ kidding me?” Her response to that was is that yes or no? I proceeded to remind her that I propose that name weeks before and was shot down immediately. At first she didn’t remember but then got a laugh out of it. I guess she just needed some time to become cool with it on her own. I wasn’t complaining. I totally discounted it and now through her own process of elimination had thought of using it herself.
Right around the time Teagan was back on the table of an option I was continuing to push to consider Zoe as a name. It was in that neither of us didn’t like it, that was far from it. We like it but others were using it. She spoke to her friend who has the little girl named Zoe and she was completely okay with us using if we wanted to. The only other stumbling block was that it was my niece’s middle name, but did not think that should be a factor in our decision since it was a middle name only. I brought it up to my sister and she wasn’t thrilled but was cool if we decided to use the name. She actually liked the name a lot (obviously since she used it as a middle name) and we’ve used it as a first name if she didn’t already have a son named Zachary. Side note I would’ve thought it would be awesome to have Zach and Zoe, but she didn’t think it would work with the oldest named Morgan. After that conversation Zoe we went back on the table as an option.
The next month or so we went back and forth between Teagan & Zoe. Pretty much the entire time I thought Zoe was the front-runner between the two. We asked friends and family who we trusted for their vote and it was basically split down the middle. I would champion one option than the other. And then for a while I just pushed for us to use Teagan. It was just different enough and it met all of MC’s requirements. I don’t know why it did that since I love both names. After realizing that it doesn’t matter between the two of them since I did like them both I stopped pushing one over the other thinking Zoe would win out. My wife surprised me after about a week of me being neutral on the situation saying she wanted to go with Teagan. That was pretty much it. We went through two or three weeks of we were pretty sure we really use that name but not definite, to this is what we are doing.
Being a tech junkie that I am I researched the name of bit more. We already knew of its Irish heritage and that it meant little poet. I looked deeper into his popularity and were surprised to find that over the past 10 years it had risen from somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 on the list of popular names in the US to be in the low 200s in popularity in the US in 2010. That is not by any means super popular but it showed a very positive trend. I also learned the reason it’s becoming more popular is because it’s an alternative to Meagan, and Reagan.
For full disclosure for all my sci-fi friends and I do acknowledge the fact that Teagan is a Doctor Who companion name. I rediscovered that when doing research on the name. I had actually forgotten that. I was surprised since the fifth Doctor was one of my favorites. I pointed it out to MC and she didn’t mind since it was a different spelling. It was Tegan, vs the Teagan we are using. My friend Amanda pointed that out as we were pulling people for their opinions of names. MC was more concerned about the fact that one of the only notable people with the name Teagan was some foreign porn star or something. What I realized later forgot to mention to Amanda was that neither of us remembered that so we happen to also be a doctor who companion name. The show was on the air for 50 years silver band overlap some names used.
For a middle name we wanted to see if we can use the middle name to name the baby after someone we loved who is no longer with us. We kicked around options using the K and the E as well as some of the more popular names from our final list. The K would’ve been for MC’s friend Kim who died very young. That E was for my grandmother Ethel and MC’s brother Edward. We ended up picking Emma.
And that’s the story of how we named Teagan Emma. I have been surprised how many people who are very vocal about how much they love the name. I think the reason is the same reason why we love it. It has the right balance between being different enough in mainstream enough to be just cool. Hopefully Teagan thinks so when she gets older. The only other Teagan I know was her name, at least according to her father. Searches online have done similar feedback from people with the name.
