Naming our babies :)

If you're wondering how we came up with names for our babies, you're reading the right post!

As you probably know, we weren't sure if our twins were boys or girls, but we had two girl names picked out even before we knew we were having twins! It was super easy for us to agree on those names, but of course, it couldn't be that simple. We had boys instead! We only barely chose our boy names; I think we agreed on them just a few days before their birth!

To choose names, Dan and I both used iPhone apps. Our favorite was "Stork Drop." It was the cutest thing! It had a picture of a stork, and when you shake your phone, a few dozen names rain down. You can drag a name near the stork, and it will tell you the meaning of the name, the popularity over the last several decades, etc. After hours and hours of "playing" Stork Drop, Dan and I each had our own favorites in mind. Unfortunately, our favorite names were each other's least favorite names!! So we had to keep looking until we found names we agreed on. And those names were: Asher Luke and Eli James!

ASHER
-Asher was one of the names that rained down on Stork Drop! I stashed it under favorites because it was unique but simple to spell and prounouce. I definitely didn't want to give our babies names that were "too" unique! Asher was also the last name of one of my professors at LSU during my graduate year (the year I was pregnant with these twins!) While I didn't exactly name Asher after her, it's still a nice story :) And I didn't not name him after her I guess! haha. But anyway, I loved that I didn't personally know any boys with the first name Asher. After checking the meaning on Stork Drop, I saw it meant "happy, lucky, and blessed." Love it! Asher is also one of the tribes in the Bible. I also love Genesis 30:13 "Then Leah said, 'Oh, how happy I am! The women will call me happy.' So she named him Asher." And so Asher stuck!

ELI
-A few weeks before having the twins, still without names for boys, I was in church at the Ring, stressing about the fact that we hadn't chosen boy names yet! So instead of paying attention (sorry, Josh!) I flipped through Dan's Bible in search of names. I came across a few good ones that were already taken by friends (Judah, Jude, Jonah, Levi, Noah...). But then I came across a good one that wasn't taken! Elijah! Yay! From that moment, Elijah was added to both mine and Dan's list of possible names. However, I really wanted to officially shorten it to Eli, because when would I ever call him Elijah? So I wanted to just save the hassle from day one, haha. In the Bible, Elijah was a great prophet, and his name means "the Lord is my God." Perfect! (There is also an "Eli" in the Bible, who was a high priest, but that's not who our Eli was named after).

Middle names: LUKE and JAMES
-Middle names were definitely less important to me than first names, so they were much easier to choose. In my opinion, James is one of those "go-to" middle names for boys, sort of like "Marie" or "Ann" for girl middle names. I mean, half the girls you know are probably "____ Marie" or "____ Ann"! Same for boys, there's bound to be lots of "____ James"-es that you know. Anyway, we really like the name James, and Dan even suggested it as a first name several times. Also, the name James always brings me to back to my favorite book of the Bible and the girl's Bible study I used to go to at the Kwasny's house back in high school. So it was settled: Eli James :) To balance his middle name, I wanted another book of the Bible as a middle name for Asher. Why not one of the gospels? To me, "Asher Luke" sounded the best of the four choices, so we chose that.

....and that's how we named our two blue bundles of joy!

Here are the birth announcements I made for the boys to hang above their cribs. They each include the meanings of their names:

-beth