All About the Name

This is one of my favorite pictures from our wedding of Tray and his Nanny, Lucy LaRue. I'm so glad that she was able to be a part of our special day. She passed away in April of this year and she has been greatly missed.


When we found out that I was pregnant right away we started to talk about names. I already had some picked out for boys and girls, but of course Tray didn't like any of them. We just COULD NOT decide on a boy name, so we were kind of banking on it being a girl! If it was a boy, I think he might have been nameless for awhile because we were having that much trouble! The one girl name I really liked he was alright with, but not completely sold. Of course the more I thought about it, I loved it and started to work on Tray to like it. When we found out it was a girl we started saying her name and decided that would be it. So we had our first name, but the middle name was a tough one. Nothing seemed to "fit." We debated on two different middle names, and possibly no middle name at all. I did not have a middle name and when I got married I took my maiden name as my middle name and liked the idea of my daughter doing the same. Tray's family has a tradition of going by their middle names only, so we met in the middle and decided she would have a middle name but go by her first name.


I was very torn between the two middle names, but one day last week I was blow drying my hair and just thinking about the names and I finally decided. We finally have a full name for our little girl! Her name is Emma LaRue Saunders. His grandmother went by LaRue (like their families tradition) and it was one name that seemed to fit with Emma. Their were several other reasons why that name felt right to me. Most importantly, family and tradition are very important to me and since we have two very different backgrounds I wanted Emma to know about both sides of her family. Tray's family on his mom's side are part of the Chickasaw Indian Nation of Oklahoma and I want Emma to know about that. Having a different and unique middle name will give her the opportunity to let people know about her great grandmother and her family. Also, I myself have always had a "unique" name and with Emma being a VERY common name, I wanted her to have a unique middle name (the other name we were debating was also VERY common). And lastly, there is a good chance that she could be born on Nanny's birthday, which is April 6th.


So that's the story of the name! Emma has been in the top 10, if not number 1, common names for years! Oddly enough, with both Tray and I working with kids, we have never had an Emma, so that made it easy to decide! Alot of names we were coming up with we didn't like because it reminded us of a certain kid. There were a few boy names that Tray would say, "No that kid was lazy" or "That kid had a bad attitude." I'm so happy with her name and can't wait to meet our little Emma!