What's in a Name? Part II

When we named Gabrielle it was all a bit unreal, especially to me, but I don't remember it being all that difficult. I was pretty much locked on Tennessee from the instant that Belinda uttered it in a brain-storming session, and I also wanted badly to include Maxwell as I didn't want miss my chance to continue the tradition, so in the end she was only a few days old when we finally settled on all her names and their order. But when it came time to do it all again, I think we both found it much harder. I was adamant that he couldn't have fewer names and that the same principles should apply, but maybe since he was already Isaac to us (see below) we didn't feel any urgency to settle on the other names until we felt like the government was going to start hassling us to register him. And then we got it wrong.

Brooklyn

We stayed with the place-name thing, but traded American states for cities. When Belinda and I were in the middle of our overlapping parental leave with Gabrielle we spent a week in New York City, staying in an apartment in Brooklyn. We stayed in a neighbourhood that I would normally be terrified to walk through at night but since we walked everywhere with Gabrielle in a backpack I felt perfectly fine: "Who would mug someone with a baby in a backpack?"

Isaac

Isaac was the front-runner for boys names by a mile when Belinda was pregnant the first time. Nothing was even close as I recall, so as soon as we learned he was a boy (Belinda got her way the second time, finding out the baby's gender during the ultrasound) we immediately started to refer to him as Isaac and that was that.

Ziv

Belinda's cousin Ziv, a strapping young man and former paratrooper in the Israeli army and the father two young children, was struck and killed by a car while riding his bicycle. I campaigned strongly for the symmetry with Maxwell but I also must shoulder most of the blame for the initial Zion version of that honour. But it's fixed now, and we both feel much better.

Peres

Belinda's last name.

Draper

Mark's last name.

What's In A Name? Part I

Both Belinda and I love out-of-the-ordinary names. But back before Gabrielle was born and when we were first talking about names, we were both a little concerned about predetermining her (or his - we didn't know at the time) fate by choosing a crazy name. I've always loved the story of Picabo Street (who as legend has it was called Little Girl until she was two at which time she was allowed to choose her own name) so we came up with the idea of bestowing both a "rock-star" name and a "CEO" name and letting her choose later which one she wanted to go by.

Tennessee

The 16th state and a beautiful word. When on our road-trip Tennessee was an unexpected highlight: we loved Graceland and Memphis and had a couple of nice nights in campgrounds there. My Merlin bicycle was made in Chattanooga and when Belinda was pregnant with Gabrielle we went to the Bonnaroo music festival in Manchester.

Gabrielle

Belinda wanted a name of Hebrew origin which helped limit the scope somewhat. Gabrielle was an early front-runner in a field of Sarahs and Rebeccas and whatnot.

Maxwell

Gabrielle's father is Mark Maxwell. Mark's father is Patrick Maxwell. Patrick's father was Leslie Maxwell. Leslie's mother was Kathleen Florence Maxwell. Kathleen's brother was Thomas Maxwell. Thomas Maxwell, Second Lieutenant, 8th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, died age 20 on September 9, 1916 in the Battle of Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme.

Peres

Belinda's last name.

Draper

Mark's last name.

Hanukkah hijinks

We had a low-key Hanukkah celebration this year, but we did manage to light candles the first few days before leaving for London. Gabrielle has become the designated candle-lighter and does a very good job of it. We put the menorah in the window, and just outside, you can see our low-key "winter lights." (Okay, okay, there's no such thing as winter lights... they're Christmas lights!! A couple of realistic-looking twig deer eating snow right by our little fir tree covered in white lights.)

Playing dreidel is a holiday must - Gabrielle is pretty good at spinning the dreidel...

...and Isaac is just starting to figure it out...

...but Mark is the real dreidel champ in the family, cleaning up the pennies game after game. He also provided technical assistance, looking up the rules of dreidel on his little phone.

Peres men

Four variations on a theme: