Thu 18 Feb 2010
In the comments section of my last post Mike expressed interest in how we decided on names for our twin girls. In particular I think he was interested in how we settled on which one would be called what.
So here’s the whole story of the naming of the Schmoops:
We spent months trying to come up with appropriate names. We never did manage to agree on decent male names. Well, that’s not entirely true; we both liked Benjamin and Samuel, but one of my cousins had had twin boys the year before and guess what she called them? So we couldn’t go with that.
Lynda liked Aiden for a boy’s name. I suggested that if both twins were boys we could call them “Aiden” and “Abettin.” For some reason Lynda didn’t want to go with that.
Fortunately we had girls instead, and we had managed to agree on girls’ names. I’ve always liked the name Erin ever since Erin Mulcahey was in my core group back in first year Ryerson. So I suggested Erin and Lynda agreed. We were both interested in celtic names and that certainly fit the bill, although I understand the name Erin is far more popular in North America than it is in Ireland. (For those of you who may not know, Erin means Ireland).
At our friend Alison George’s wedding reception we sat with a woman named Keira, who was Scottish I believe, and when she introduced herself Lynda and I looked at one another and knew we had the second name.
Middle names were a challenge. Lynda’s mother’s name was Anne, although she always called herself Nancy. So for awhile there Erin was going to be Erin Anne Mahoney. I wasn’t keen on the name Anne but figured I would have to lump it, as I had picked the first name. Then it occurred to us that Lynda’s mother had insisted on being called Nancy because she hated the name Anne so much. What a relief. So Erin became Erin Rose because my grandmother’s name was Rose, and my mother’s name Rosaleen.
Keira was harder. We didn’t honour anybody with her middle name. I was driving somewhere one day trying to think of good sounding names and the name Leigh popped into my head. Keira Leigh has a ring to it. I’m always singing, “Keira Leigh, Keira Loo, we love you” to Keira. She doesn’t seem to mind. (So as not to leave Erin out, I sing “Erin Ree, Erin Roo, we love you” to her. She doesn’t seem to mind either.)
As for the order, the girls were born two months premature, so we hadn’t gotten around to deciding the order yet. Literally as they were coming out, the nurse (whose name was Grace) asked us whose name was going to be what. Lynda said, we should call the first one out Erin because she’s “errin’ in her ways” wanting to come out two months early.
I reacted strongly to that, saying, no way can we saddle the child with that as the reason for her name! Which settled it. The first one out became Keira, and the second one out became Erin.
