When I was pregnant with Eli, we went back and forth the entire pregnancy. Ee went to the hospital with four names chosen. Strangely enough, Eli wasn't one of them...at that point, Ava and Jace, at 2 1/2 and 17 months couldn't pronouce "L"s and it drove me insane. So we had removed that name from the list. We went into delivery still trying to choose between Koen, Finn, Brody, and some other name that must not have been that great because I can't remember it.
When he was born, he looked nothing like any of those names, and he did look like an Elias, so we named him Robert Elias.
By the time I was pregnant with Seth, I knew I needed to have a name picked...from a superstitious standpoint, it hadn't escaped me that it just so happened that the only baby we hadn't chosen a name for just happened to die. Yeah, silly, but I wanted to have a name picked for our new baby.
Then, Seth or God or someone pretty much picked his name for him for him when I was in the first trimester. I was praying so hard for another boy, and every book I was reading had a character named "Seth" in it. Then we found out that it meant "Appointed" and "God has Granted" and that in the case of Adam and Eve, Seth was the third child, born after a loss, and he was given to Eve to help heal her heart after she lost Abel. He was also appointed to carry on the work that Abel had done in their family.
We found out we were having a boy at 15 weeks and that was just his name. Seth. I chose Broderick as a middle name because I always loved the name Brody and I thought we might nickname him that, which we never have. Although we do call him Seth B. a lot, which I think is adorable.
So this time around, I found out I was pregnant on Mother's Day. When I was driving to Indiana to visit family in June, I was talking on the phone to John about baby names, and we both remembered that "Evany" was a name we had liked for a girl when I was pregnant with Seth that never got off the ground since he was a boy. It's literally the only girl name we discussed. We talked about how we both liked it, then we laughed and said "Why are we even discussing girl's names? There is no way this won't be another boy."
Haha.
Of course, by the time I found out we were having another girl, John had left. He wasn't interested in talking about names or about the baby being a girl at all, so while I went through making lists and all of that, Evany was just there in my head. At first I was concerned because I thought we were making it up, but eventually I did find evidence of it being an Australian girl's name, and that made me feel better. I liked it. Plus, it fit in with all of my baby name rules.
I'm going to share those rules with you, but you'll probably think I'm crazy. That's ok. It'll make us closer. Here are the rules the name had to fit within:
1. It had to have a short "e" sound. I loved how Ava and Jace's names go so well together with the matching long "a" sound, and since this baby was going to be so close in age to Seth, I wanted it to go well with his name. That way, the oldest two names would mesh, and the youngest two would mesh. Eli's name kind of stands along, which is okay with me.
2. It had to be a longer name, preferably 3 syllables, that could be nicknamed, since she was a girl. In our family, Jace and Seth had short, strong names. I wanted a girl's name to have both a "name" and a cute "nickname" like Ava has. (Her full first name is Avelyn, although she almost exclusively goes by Ava)
3. I wanted it to mesh not only with Seth's name, but with Ava's. Seth and Jace's names went nicely together, and I wanted the girl's names to do the same. I was leaning towards wanting it to have a "v" in it somewhere.
4. It had to start with a vowel. Totally by accident, our kids names go vowel, consonant, vowel, consonant. Once I noticed the pattern, I didn't want to mess it up.
So after all that, it just so happened that the name Evany, which was the very first girl name we thought of, fit every single rule I had. And there were basically no other names that did, and the ones I found I didn't like.
So that's how she became Evany (pronounced just like the name Evan, with a y at the end.) Her nickname is another name that I always loved for a little girl, but would never had used as a standalone name. Vivi, pronounced like the beginning of Vivian. I wasn't sure at first if I would use it often, but I have already caught myself calling her Vivi a time or two.
As for her middle name, I just really like the name Jane. At the beginning of the pregnancy, I thought it was really cool that Evany Jane used both mine and John's first initials, and by the end I just liked the whole name too much to change it just because that wasn't so endearing to me anymore. Hopefully someday she'll think it's cool that she her initials are a combination of her mom's and dad's. I also like that Evany Jane and Avelyn Monet sound really cute when said together.
But mostly, I just think its a super cool name. I'm glad you all like it, too! I was nervous about telling everyone, because like I told you, you would never in a million years guess it!
So that's the story of Evany's name. You can call her Evany, or Vivi, or even Bindi. My mom still calls her Bindi almost every time she mentions her. Apparently it's sticking.
