What's in a Name?

Today's lesson comes from a page in Russia ABCs, a pretty neat little book for children by the way.





Many have asked us about the name for our little boy. Traditional Russian "nameology" (is that a word??) is rather interesting. The middle name is based on the father's first name, whether the child is a boy or girl. The girl's middle name will end with -ovna or -yevna; the boy's middle name will end with -ovich or -yevich. As an example, Rosy, daughter of Tom, would end up Rosy Tomovna. Rick, son of Tom, would end up Rick Tomanovich.

Whether our little boy will have all that remains to be seen. From what I understand, we will have to give him a name by the end of the first trip. Doug and I actually haven't approached the subject since probably February, but as of then we were considering naming him an "American" name and using his Russian first name as perhaps his middle name.

Now, for all of you curious people out there, we kept our names a secret until our girls were born (and I am not aware of any leaks out there by my husband...), so we will be keeping this little boy's name to ourselves as well. I'm thinking the pressure will be a little less on the whole name thing this time around as we know to focus only on a boy. We didn't find out the sex of either girl, so we had to have one of each ready to go when they were born. I do want us to have a name chosen, or at least our top 2-3, BEFORE we leave this continent though. Since Annsley was born 7 weeks early, we hadn't decided on a girl's name when she was born. The weekend she was born was the weekend for the Children's Miracle Network telethon, and since she was the "newbie" in the NICU, our local TV crew handling the local part of the telethon wanted to interview us. Well, we certainly couldn't go on TV with a no-name baby, so less than 12 hours after giving birth prematurely, getting very little sleep and stressed out to a point I'd never experienced before, we found ourselves staring frantically at this waiver we had to sign before "becoming famous" that listed our names and our baby as "Baby Rawlins." We finally decided on Annsley, and we announced her name for the first time on our local TV station. Yes, she became a household name and wasn't even a day old! :) At any rate, for my sanity, we need to have our short names list ready, even better would be THE name, because I can only imagine staring at a piece of paper typed in Russian and having to come up with his name in the spur of the moment after whirlwind trip of meeting our son for the first time. I'm sure it will be a permanent kind of thing at that point, as I can't imagine picking up the phone and calling over there, "Uhmmm, we've changed our minds....we want to name him ___ instead."

A few non-adoptive observations...
These things rock:

• Yellow Box Flip Flops--thank you Mama Carol and Kasey!! Comfortable--oh my gosh!
• Cheyenne Mountain Zoo--my girls loved feeding the giraffes and it was NOT hot! That's the zoo to go to in the summer!
• WonderColor Fingerpaints--perfect for my sanguine 4 year old

These things don't rock so much:

• The anti-meth billboard campaign in Colorado--don't get me wrong, they do their job very well, but man, they are graphic!
• Moon Sand--the people who manufacture and promote this item have never cleaned up after Kennedi.