Name that baby!

     Here at the Rumely household, we’ve been getting pretty antsy waiting for all those big milestones of pregnancy…first kicks, finding out the sex of the baby, getting a big round basketball-sized bump…so we were drawn to an idea we found in one of our many baby name books. Think of it this way, you have a group of names competing to find out which one is best…remind you of anything that perhaps takes place every March? That’s right, it was baby name bracket time!
     Our “play-off” system worked similarly to the NCAA basketball championship. We made one bracket each for boys and girls with 16 names we liked. We matched them up initially based on similarities, for instance biblical names like Caleb and Josiah were matched up and names with similar sounds like Charlotte and Juliet were pitted against each other. The best of each pair were chosen, eliminating the rest until we were down to one name for each sex.
     We passed out the brackets to family and friends so they could get an idea of the names we like and we could get an idea how our name choices might go over with others. Each of them filled out their bracket to find their favorites of our names. The results were interesting and it was great to get our family and friends involved. We can’t promise that the top names will be what we ultimately choose for our little one (in fact, I can pretty much guarantee that they won’t be—sorry!), but I can say that when Tim and I filled out our own brackets separately, we agreed on both a male and female name. And once that squirmy little cutey is in our arms, I think whatever name we chose will seem perfect to everyone. Except maybe my Uncle Joe, who insists that the baby, should it be a boy, be named after him, and if it’s a girl, be named Valerie. Again, pretty certain that’s not going to happen either.
     For those interested in how our favorite names fared with our family and friends, I will list each of the names that won the championship at least once. We had a total of 15 brackets filled out in the end.
     For boys, the name that won the championship the most (3 times), was Lucas, followed by, with two championship wins each, Caleb and Oliver. The other names that won the championship one time were Noah, Owen, Josiah, Landon, Levi, Ian, and Ezra.
     The girl name that won the championship spot most was Meredith (3 times). Amelia, Olivia, Aria, and Charlotte each earned two championship wins. The other names that won the championship once were Hannah, Violet, and Abigail.

     In other news, after my visit to the doctor on Tuesday, we now have an appointment this coming Tuesday for our anatomy scan where we will hopefully find out the sex of Baby Rumely! We are waiting until Thanksgiving to tell our families so we can do it in person, but stay tuned to the blog because I’ll announce it on here soon after we’ve announced the news to our parents and siblings. So…in case you haven’t had a chance to make your guess in our poll, you only have four more days to vote!