What's in a name?

This weekend was kind of a big weekend for our family. Cameron got Baptised on Saturday and Keric was blessed yesterday, (Sunday) by his Daddy during Sacrament meeting. My parents and Cicily were able to come which I was very grateful for, along with Chris' parents, his sister Denise and her kids, Rylan, Owen and Teran, My sister in Law Denise and her kids Jack and Anna, Chris' sister Maren and her husband Dave, and also Chris' friend from high school Dean.

Keric unfortunately was not cooperative during his blessing. Chris was able to give him his name, and then pretty quickly after that he started crying. Not just fussy crying, but MAD crying. It wasn't as noticeable to those of us in the audience, in fact it took me a minute to realize it was MY baby crying and not one in the audience, but poor Chris was pretty stressed about it. I'm sure it was very loud in the circle! Anyway, it was a nice blessing despite Keric's protesting. Chris said Keric must have only wanted his name, and didn't care much about the blessing afterwards. ha ha

I thought with it being his blessing day yesterday, it was only appropriate to tell Keric and the rest of you, what his name meant and why Chris and I decided on naming him what we did.

The day we found out we were having a boy, we were both a little shocked, me more so then Chris I think. For whatever reason we (again...probably more so me) assumed I was having a girl. We had a girl name picked out and everything. When we found out he was a boy, I felt like we needed to find him a name and quickly. I guess I felt guilty for thinking he was a girl and calling him by a girl's name for a couple months. (Sorry Bubby!)

We talked about lots of different names, and even went to Barnes and Nobel to buy a baby name book to help us out. We couldn't seem to agree on any names that either of us came up with. I liked the name Grey or Greyson, and Chris liked the name Graham. Neither of us were going to budge for the others name. I had a hard time with names because being a teacher, you hear a LOT of them, and unfortunately the names kind of stick with the person, either good or bad. Chris hates "made up names" so there was a point I was almost convinced he would be forever called "Baby Boy Wexels". As we were driving home later that night, I was reading some baby names out loud. I don't know what made Chris think of it, for all I know I could have been reading "K" names, I don't' remember, but Chris asked me how I felt about the name Keric. I thought about it for a second, and then decided that I liked it.

Chris had worked with a guy named Keric Donnely a few years ago. He was Irish, and he said he had always liked the name. I had never heard that name before which was good, I did want him to have a sort of unique name without it being too "unique", so I looked it up in the baby book and sure enough, there it was. So there we had it! A name we could BOTH agree on, one that was unique but yet not "made up". We were making progress! There were lots of different spellings of it, but we both decided we liked the spelling of Keric. I liked it for a couple different reasons. The first reason was because Chris' middle name is Eric. I liked that in a way Keric would be named after his dad a little bit. I also liked the fact that it was easy to pronounce spelled that way. Being a teacher I had had far too many experiences looking at the spelling of a name and not having a clue how to pronounce it. I didn't want him to be one of those poor little boys in school always having to correct the teacher on the pronunciation of his name.

His name Keric, depending on where you look is either Gaelic or English. The most common meaning of the name Keric is "King's Rule".

His middle name is Daniel. His middle name was much easier for us to agree upon. He was given the middle name Daniel after my Dad. I have always loved, respected and admired my Dad. I have always felt like my Dad and I have a very special relationship. I still go to him for advice, and seek out his wisdom on lots of different things. In my eyes he is one of the greatest men I know! Chris also really likes and respects my Dad a lot,so we agreed on Daniel as his middle name.

Daniel is a Hebrew name, found in the Bible and it's meaning is "God is my Judge".

So the full name that my sweet little baby was given yesterday by his Father, is Keric Daniel Wexels.

I hope that as he gets older he is as proud of his name as I am. I want him to know that in his mommy's mind, his name is very special to her because it reflects both his Daddy and his Grandpa, two very important men in her life. It was only fitting that the third important little man in her life, had a little part of the first two.

I love you little man!!!


He wasn't too happy even before we got to church.