What's in a name?

Yesterday one of my first graders (who I also taught last year in kindergarten and have known for almost a year) told me, "Mrs. Schulz, at home my family calls me by my middle name."  What?!  That was quite the shock after calling him by his first name for so long.  Well, we're working on changing what we call him at school and it's an easy enough fix, but it got me and a colleague talking about funny name stories with former students and I jokingly told her I don't want to name the baby.

While we clearly are going to give our little one a name and we think we have some pretty good ones picked out, it is a bit of a stressful process.  As a teacher, so many names remind me of a particular child I have known and I have experienced some interesting nicknames.  It's also hard and overwhelming to think about what will fit our child for their entire life.  How do people do this??

Well, we have also had some help.  One of the baby's dedicated aunts provided us with a long list of suggestions.  Bless her heart for researching unique names and including the meaning behind each one. 

Who knows what we'll end up with, but you can be sure that baby's teacher will know what to call him or her on the first day of school!