How we named our kids

Thanks to Emily and Mary, now I have two great ideas for blog posts for this never-ending month of November and nablopomo. Today I will tackle the question of how we chose our kids' names and tomorrow I will share some mission stories.
When we found out that we were pregnant the first time I had this feeling that we would have a boy. It was mother's intuition I was sure. I had even told my ESL students that I was expecting a boy and they bought boy clothes as a gift. The #1 name for our new little son was Mikhail Nikolaevich, because Nikolay's great-grandfather was Nikolay and his son was Mikhail Nikolaevich, so Nikolay, being Nikolay would have children with the patronymic Nikolaevich for boys and Nikolaevna for girls, so if we named our son Mikail, he would have the same name as Nikolay's grandfather. This all dawned on me when before leaving the Ukraine we fulfilled his mothers long awaited wish of installing a bench next to her parents' graves. I was looking at his granfather's grave and at his name and patronymic when I realized that if we had a son and named him Mikhail, he would have the same name.
Our #2 name for the boy I was sure was growing inside me was Levin, I think it rhymes with Kevin. My first semester back at BYU from Ukraine, I decided to minor in Russian and took a Russian history class and a Russian literature class where I read Anna Karenina. I really connected with the main character named Levin.
Much to my surprise when I had the 20 week ultrasound, the technician showed me that the baby was a girl. That really threw me for a loop name-wise, I hadn't even thought of any girl names. I also realized that I did not yet have mother's intuition. I started coming up with ideas for names, but none of the sounded right to Nikolay. So, I kept searching and making lists. Eventually it came down to me making a list of my favorite ten that he wasn't completely against and then we went through the process of elimination until Ariel was the only one left.
In the back of my head I did know that the Little Mermaid had the same name, but I thought that was an obscure fact that no one would really make a connection with. Oh, how I had underestimated the marketing machine that is Disney! I swear that before I had children there was no concept of the "Disney Princesses" grouped together like that an on any kind of product imaginable. Can any one out there support me in this notion that before like the year 2000 Disney had not kicked into gear it's whole Disney Princesses campaign? Because although I still like the name, if Ariel the Mermaid had been as well known as she is now, I think we would have chosen another name.
Another strange thing that I remember about her name is that a few weeks before she was born, Ariel Sharon became the Prime Minister of Isreal. When I saw a picture of this large old fat man with my precious little girl's name under it on the news it was kind of a weird sensation. I thought she would ask me, "Why did you name me after that old guy?" So, maybe I shouldn't be all that disturbed by Disney, because so far she has relished in the fact that she shares a name with a princess.
With our second pregnancy I was hoping for a boy but was thrilled to find out that it was another girl, because we already had tons of girl stuff, and I think girls need sisters. By this time in our lives we were living in Salt Lake City and attending the Russian branch. Most of our Russian friends had a hard time pronouncing Ariel and they would always ask what it means. (Someone told me that in Hebrew it is the Lion of the Lord.) Anyway, so I decided to start looking for Russian-friendly names. Not necessarily Russian names, because there are only like five of them (Natalia, Olga, Svetlana, Tatiana, Valentina). I had a really great (by great I mean thick) Russian-English dictionary that had all kinds of interesting appendices at the back, one of which is a list of Russian women's names. So first I went through the list of about 400 names and eliminated the ones I hated, but I tried to stay really open-minded. Then I would occasionally ask Nikolay what he thought of some of them, he didn't get excited about any of them and vetoed most of them. Eventually we got the list down to about 10 names and decided that we liked Adriana the best. Although, we found it in the Russian-English dictionary and Russian speakers can pronounce it, it has Latin roots. Out of all our Russian friends and acquaintances, I have never heard someone say that they had ever heard the name before. We pronounce the first "A" like "ah," the same way Spanish speakers would. Now we have a neighbor from Puerto Rico who is seven and named Adriana also. When my Adriana was smaller and Ariel would go on about being a princess I always told her that she was princess Adriana too. When we saw the movie Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus where the heroin's named Annika (the same as my third daughter), Adriana got a little sad that there wasn't a movie with Princess Adriana in it.
On our way to the hospital, I started to think, "What if the ultra sound is wrong, and it is a boy, what are we going to name him?" Nikolay and I decided on Daniel, but didn't end up needed the name anyway.
With our third pregnancy I was REALLY hoping for a boy, and it took some time to get excited about having another girl, partly because then I knew for sure that this wasn't my last pregnancy and when you are pregnant you just want it to be over and not think about ever doing it again. I had always thought that I would have 2 girls and 2 boys, so it kind of threw off my game plan. BTW I still want another boy, but I don't want o be pregnant anytime soon and I am not ready to be the mother to 5 children at this point in my life so we might have "caboose" (or two if it's not a boy) in like 8 years from now. I remember talking to Rebekah on the phone right after I found out and she reassured me that girls are better anyway, who wants a boy? (me) She also said that when you get pregnant you should do it because you want a child not a specific gender, otherwise you could end up with a family of 7 daughters. That word should is interesting when you are talking about family planning. And it is not that I didn't want a girl or understand what the odds were, its just the feeling I was dealing with at the moment.
Anyway, back to how we chose her name. Lots of people asked us if we named our first two daughters with A names on purpose, and we hadn't, it was coincidence, but I started to feel like the third daughter should have an A name as well so she wouldn't feel left out (I used to be all about fairness, but now I realize as my father used to always say "Life is not fair, and I am not the equalizer!") Anyway, we were both kinda partial to A names, it just felt right. I think a lot of things about parenting are like that, when you start doing things a certain way with your older kids it starts to seem like that is the right way to do things. So, we went through a lot of names, but nothing really sounded right, until one day I was in the car listening to the radio and I heard the name Annika. It was in reference to the golf star Annika Sörenstam from Sweeden. I think she had just won the LPGA championship for the 3rd year in a row. We are not golf fans and by no means did we name our daughter after her, but I liked the sound of the name, and Nikolay did too. I couldn't decide if we should use the European "ah" sound for the beginning A or the American short a sound like in "back" and "bad," so I asked Nikolay, and amazingly, he preferred the American pronunciation. (At that point he couldn't even say "dad" without making it sound like "dead.") So that is how we ended up with three A names with three different A sounds. Ya gotta love English phonics.
When we found out that our fourth child was a boy, my first inclination was to name him Daniel, but Nikolay's brother had named his son that in the meantime, so that was out. Everyone kept asking us if we would name him an A name, but we couldn't find one we liked. Adam and Aaron we already taken by my siblings (sorry Erin, you know what I mean). Maegan graciously offered to let me use Aidan like her son, but I just can't see cousin's sharing a name. We thought about the Russian name Anton, for about two seconds. So, we came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be an A name. I didn't want to name him a super common New Testament name like Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John (besides Luke was taken). Or Joseph or Joshua (and Jacob was taken) or all the newly popular old Testament names like Noah and Isaac or Abraham. It is hard with boy names, because you don't want to get too creative like River or anything but so many names are SO common. I don't remember exactly how we "found" Dallin. Maybe I was thinking about all of the modern day apostles (Dallin H. Oaks) but we didn't exactly name our son after him. I think I just really liked the sound of it (it is kinda like Daniel) and Nikolay really liked it too. It is funny how many people said that he looked like Dallin H. Oaks as a new born. I kept thinking "Don't most newborns look like Dallin H. Oaks?"
So that is how we named our kids, and no, their names are not Russian (everyone asks that). They do all have the middle intial N (no period per Nikolay's request) I like to say that it stands for Nikolaevna and Nikolaevich but Nikolay thinks the patronymics are too long. I really like all of their names. We did make a point of praying about each of them and we felt that we were making the right choice, but that is one of the areas I feel that our gracious Father in Heaven gives us a lot of freedom of expression in.
Today I am grateful for my kids names and for blog comments. I'll write about some cool things that happened to me on my mission tomorrow.