Names

I just saw that the name Mia made number 10 on the top ten girl list for 2009.  Bummer.  Dee and I tried hard to pick names that weren't so common.  I guess that everyone must have seen how adorable my blond hair blue eyed Mia was and then they named their babies after her.

In case you hadn't realized Dee and I both have kind of unusual names.  Growing up with my name was complicated.  I liked that the name Kelsea was unique but nobody could spell it or pronounce it right.  Plus my name always gets underlined as being a misspelled word.  Look!  It's doing it right now!  Ok, you probably can't see that.

In grade school I would always correct people who said my name wrong.  After that I gave up and just answer to anything that was close.  So I have been called Kelsey, Kel-C-ah, Kelesiah, and somehow some people manage to put a T in there KelTs-e-ah.  It's kind of a long name with no cute nick name to shorten it.  K through 12 grade, I insisted on being called Kelsea.  Except in eighth grade when my closest friends called me BoBo.  But that was a weird phase.  In college everyone shortens everyone's names.  So to my roommates I was Kels.  I think Randi is the only one who still calls me Kels.  Don't worry Randi I don't mind.  I find it endearing.  But Dee met me back in middle school so he has only ever called me Kelsea.  I take that back, sometimes he calls me baby, honey, or sexy.  But those don't really count as names.  I remember when Dee and I first got engaged we would try out those terms of endearment like honey and sweetie and laugh at how weird and silly it was to say them.  Some of the silliness seemed to fade away and a couple of those names stuck.  I think it was when Holly was little I called Dee "Honey" so much that she would call him that too.  She would even say "That's not Dad.  That's Honey".  When I was young I never wanted to refer to Dee as "Dad" and never wanted to have him call me "Mom".  But once you have kids you kind of have to.  You can't let your little kids keep calling their father "Honey".  A few weeks ago Dee called me Kelsea in front of the kids.  Holly asked "Why did you call her that?  Her name is Mom."  Now it's almost like my real name has become a bad word.  Oh, can't say that in front of the kids.

So because of the challenges I faced being named Kelsea I wanted to give my kids simple names.  You hear it once you get it.  Easy to say, easy to spell.  I also didn't want to give my kids names that were so common that they end up in a class with 3 other Mia's.  When we named our baby Mia I thought that name was fairly original.  How did it become so popular?  Maybe a girl with a popular name is destined to be popular herself.