His Name

Before I was pregnant, Jeff and I would occasionally talk about names for our future children. We always had a lengthy list of girl names that we really liked, but we could never come up with even one boy name that we felt like we liked enough to actually use.

Once we found out we were expecting a baby, we realized pretty quickly that we didn't particularly like referring to our child as "the baby" and "it," and we really wanted to call him or her by a name! So we got serious about picking names, with the goal of having a boy name and a girl name ready to go before we found out the sex of the baby so we could start using the baby's name as soon as possible.

We eventually thought of one (just one!) boy name that we actually loved. Since there were literally no other options that we really liked or considered, it ended up being pretty easy to decide on our boy name. We had a really hard time narrowing down our list of girl names though. The night before the ultrasound where we found out the sex of our baby, we stayed up late just lying in bed trying to decide on a girl name, but no one name seemed to be exactly what we were going for. We went to the ultrasound the next day with a definite boy name, but we still hadn't committed to a girl name.

So when we found out that we're having a little boy, we were relieved that we wouldn't actually have to figure the whole girl name thing out, and we knew immediately that his name would be...

We actually picked his middle name first. Jeff and I have thought for a long time that we'd love to name a son after St. Thomas Becket, but we didn't particularly like "Thomas" (our good friend/the best man from our wedding is named Thomas, so it would be weird). We loved "Becket," but since our last name also starts with a B, using it as a first name didn't seem like a great choice. But it was perfect for a middle name! Adding the second T was just a preference/stylistic thing.

Picking a first name was really hard... there were just no boy names that we liked! But one day one of us heard "Connor" somewhere, and we both just loved it. We looked it up in The Catholic Baby Name Book and read all about Blessed Conor O'Devaney, a courageous Irish priest,  and it just seemed perfect (Jeff and I are both partially Irish), and we knew that's what we'd go with!

So that's his name! We love it, and we really love calling him by it! And I really loved it when I walked into the kitchen one day and saw that my sweet husband had drawn this on the chalkboard by our kitchen table:

We love our little Connor so, so much already, and we're just very excited to welcome him into the world in just a few months!