What's in a name?

Probably the number one question we get is where did Tennysen's name come from. The simple answer is that we just liked it. But there were some other things that solidified it for us. We had heard the name before for a boy, and we thought it was a great name, but we were having a girl, so we thought it was out of the question. Then I bought this really cool baby name book that had some great name lists in it. Under the Literary list was Tennyson and it was under the gender neutral list, which meant it would not be crazy to consider it as a girl's name. I got very excited because I instantly loved it. We had had a lot of trouble finding names we LOVED. I told Todd about the name and that we could just change the spelling and it could be a girl's name. He wasn't instantly impressed--I think because it was different.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was a poet and he wrote one of my favorite poems ever--The Lady of Shalott. It's a super sad poem, but was featured in one of my favorite movies growing up, Anne of Green Gables. I've always loved the poem because even though it's sad, it's still somehow beautiful. So even though this fact is not the reason we chose the name, it did seem kind of meant to be.

The other thing we considered was the commonality of the name. With absolutely no disrespect to my parents--I think my name is pretty, but it is super common. It was number one on the name lists for a few years in a row back in the '70s and '80s. It was so common, I learned, that today, there are support groups for girls named Jennifer because they feel they don't have their own identities. While I think that's kind of crazy, it was annoying that I went all 12 years of school with another Jenny, and therefore, I was always known as Jenni D. So a different, less common name was important to us.

It took Todd until the next morning to decide he really liked the name. So once that happened, we had our name. Then for her middle name, she is named after her great aunt Meree, just as I was. And that's how her name came to be. We love it!

And here are some more pictures of our precious Tennysen.