For the Wynne!: What's in a name?

As you know, we didn't find out the sex of Baby Wynne, so Ryan and I had to discuss both boy and girl names.

We had a few rules:

Not Ryan Jr.
(We wanted him/her to have their own name)
Not Robert
(Far too many on the Snekser side of the family)
Not any name of the kids of our friends or family members
(We already have lots of duplicates among the kids ... like multiple Sophias, Ally/Allie/Ali, Megan/Meghan, Emmas, even 2 Nolans!)
Not any name in the top 10 boys or top 10 girls name for the last few years
(I hated being one of a million Jennifers!)

In addition to the above rules, there were also lots of names we just didn't like. I think this comes with being a teacher: so many names are associated with previous students. I also don't like very trendy names and Ryan doesn't like more traditional names, especially for girls. So we went back and forth for a while.

Of course, we also had to think of how the names sounded with Wynne (no Lynns, or Brynns, or Madelyns or Finns) and the nicknames people would give our kid (e.g., I love James, but hate Jimmy).

Somehow, we got to Eli Hudson pretty early on. Before we even told people we were pregnant. And I don't really remember exactly how we got there.

I loved the name Hudson, because we live right on the Hudson River in NY. Right now, I am looking out our living room window at the river. In the winter, we can see all the way down the Hudson to Manhattan and up the river to the Tappan Zee Bridge from our bedroom window. The hospital where Eli was born is also right on the Hudson River. To me, with my love of water, Hudson was the perfect name.

Ryan didn't love Hudson as a first name, so I agreed to it as a middle name. Then we needed a first name and agreed on Eli. I always liked the name Eli. To me, it sounds strong, but also intelligent. It's not overly religious or non-religious. It's not associated with a particular race. It's cute for a baby, but also manly enough for when he is an adult. No horrific nicknames, sounds good with Wynne, not in the top 50 names of 2010, not the name of anyone we really know. It fulfilled all of my requirements. And Ryan didn't hate it.

And so we have Eli Hudson.

I do want to point out, he was NOT named after Eli Manning.

Sure, I love me some Mannings, but he wasn't directly named after a football player (whose name is actually Elisha, by the way!). I should have really considered this living next to NYC ... with a NY Giants Super Bowl win and Eli Manning as the MVP ... oh well.