Let me begin by posting a photo of our much loved Nolan Theodore, taken just hours after he was born. I will point out that, in this photo, he looks an awful lot like Alexander did at the age of one or two months. Amazing what a couple of extra pounds will do:

Once we knew that Baby 2.0 would be a boy, we had to get serious about picking a name.

Paulette and I have a long list of names that we'd like to use for a daughter or daughters. But coming up with boys names, for some reason, has proven to be harder.

We did not know before our first was born whether he would turn out to be a boy or a girl, so we had to prepare for both contingencies. We knew that if we had a girl, our first choice was a family name from Paulette's side in the family that would, in effect, be naming the girl after her mother (and mother's mother, and mother's mother's mother). It was Paulette's idea that if we had a boy, we should name him after his father, in a similarly derivative fashion.

The story goes like this: while growing up, I'd look in various dictionaries to see what my name meant, and typically came across an entry that would say that Allan/Alan/Allen was derived from Alexander/Alexandra. My sister Sandra's name, likewise, is derived from Alexandra.

This was a coincidence that my parents neither knew of beforehand, nor expected, nor intended. But there it was, and I always thought that was an interesting coincidence.

On the basis of my telling Paulette this story, she suggested that we pick Alexander as the first name of our first born, if he should prove to be a boy (which he did). This way, Alex would be named after his father (and aunt) without having *exactly* the same name. In case you're wondering, his second name came down to a choice between Ivan and Benjamin. In the end, we decided to honor one of the more interesting thinkers and tinkerers involved with the American Revolution rather than paying homage to my interest and background in Russian studies.

(Names are to be picked at least as much on the basis of how they sound as by what they mean. "Alexander Ivan" would work well, and sounds very Russian, while "Alexander Benjamin" also sounds good and is decidedly American in tone. I'm interested in Russian history, but I am very much an American....)

With the second child on the way, we learned his gender before he was born and took quite a bit of the available time to come up with a name. We started by making a list of names we wouldn't use:

• first names of immediate family members
  
• names in the top 20 or so of the most commonly given boy names in the US in the past few years
  
• names of obvious religious significance
  
• and names that would be difficult to spell right the first time

Paulette has three brothers and we both have many male cousins. We wanted to avoid the problem of "Hey, why'd they name their kid after so-and-so instead of me?" I had, at one point, thought about naming our second child after my cousin who had died a few years ago in a car accident, which also happens to be the name of one of Paulette's brothers, but we eventually decided to defer that idea. Likewise, the recent death of my maternal grandfather almost made me ask to reopen the decision we had finally made, but I chose not to.

We've run into an odd situation where every group of toddlers where we take Alex, there is at least one other Alex. So, we decided to avoid super-common names. (Alexander was the 16th most common name the year he was born, but we didn't expect that to be the case at the time.)

As for religiously significant names... there are a dozen reasons for us to avoid them, many having to do with not wanting to saddle the child with too many loaded messages in his name.

Then there's the spelling issue. Paulette and I both grew up with having both our first and last names mercilessly mangled by anyone we needed to give our names to, and since we are giving my last name to the child, we may as well give him a first name that's easier to spell correctly on the first try.

Now then: with these stipulations (only four of them!), we found it nearly impossible to come up with a name.

For a while, Andrew was at the top of our list, until we discovered its religious significance. Theodore was also at the top of our list at one point, but we simply didn't like any of the common nicknames for Theodore.

Nolan is a family name on Paulette's side, particularly drawing from Irish family members. We both have Irish grandparents, so going with an Irish theme felt right to both of us. It's easy to spell right on the first try, even though it's not one of the most common names in the US. It's meaning, in Irish, is "noble; faithful." Those are virtues we can happily endorse. (Most other Irish names mean "stout warrior" or "brave warrior" or "fearless warrior" or "drinks too much".) We are unaware of any religious significance attached to the name. And neither of us have any immediate family members who share that first name (although, alas, one brother does have it as a middle name -- we let that slide).

His middle name? Well, since Abraham was out of the running this time (rule number three), we opted to pay homage to another stand-out American president: Theodore Roosevelt. In other words, a name synonymous with "bold warrior".

If there should be a Baby 3.0, we will use a different set of rules for picking the name, just as the rules for Name 2.0 were different from the previous time. But that's an if for another time. Right now, we are very happy and very blessed to welcome Nolan Theodore into our lives.

There is, however, a postscript to this naming story...

By complete coincidence -- and I swear that neither of us noticed this until long after we decided upon the names -- I realized recently that the first letters of Alex are "AL" while the last few letters of Nolan are "LAN"... and so, in a very roundabout and accidental sort of way, their names still kinda add up to being a derivative of mine.