Seventh Kransling is a boy, and he has a name!

adventures in naming

Choosing a name for a new baby is a different process for everyone. Some know right away what names they want to use. Others compile a list to work from before they even begin to start a family. Still more find that nothing seems “quite right”, and have to try out several before they find the name that feels right for their new child. Some name the child before they even know they’re expecting, and some wait until the baby is born to choose.

We’ve experienced every type of name-choosing on the list, except for the waiting until birth. We’ve not done that yet. However, we’ve had children named before we were pregnant (Ephraim). We’ve had one firmly picked but then changed it unexpectedly (Clive was supposed to be Friedrich, Beatrice was supposed to be Ethne). We’ve had one of us choose a name that took the other a long time to get used to (it took me months to grow accustomed to Anselm). We’ve had names that came to us unexpectedly, like a thunderbolt (suggesting Rex for Eldore’s middle name was like having lightning strike). And we’ve sat together at a restaurant table comparing name after name in order to find that one, though nothing really seems to feel right (Seventh Kransling.)

aurick

Jeremy chose Auric (or Aurick or Aurik) years ago. He derived it based on the Latin word aurum, meaning gold. Coincidentally, the Germanic name Aurick means “noble leader” or “protective ruler”, which is satisfying to me; our long-discarded name for Clive–Friedrich Edmund–meant “peaceful ruler” and “rich protector”. Having both of those meanings roughly wrapped up in the same name is strangely coincidental.

The middle name, though, gave us fits. Since Jeremy chose the first name, I chose the second. First I wanted to use Schulert, which is a family surname that means “scholar”. But my enthusiasm for that name waned.

We are reading Beowulf, and Anselm was adamant that, if the baby was a boy, we would name him “Hrothgar”. While that name is awesome (Aurick Hrothgar!) I knew I would be explaining it always, and I just didn’t want that burden for myself, or for Aurick, either.

the middle name hunt

After our ultrasound revealed we were expecting another boy, we went to have dinner together. We tried on various middle names as we sat together at the table. We have tried to draw most of our names from family or highly-admired authors or philosophers, or even book characters. It’s important to us that the child know they’re named after someone specific. So we started throwing out names of writers that have been important to us. George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, William Lane Craig, J. R. R. Tolkien were all contenders

George Aurick
Aurick Chesterton
Aurick Lane
Aurick Reuel
Aurick Zacharias
Aurick Boethius (what a mouthful!)
Aurick Bonaventure

There were family names we could consider, like

Aurick Oscar
Aurick Azro
Aurick Osmond

Or we could recycle an old discarded name, like

Aurick Edmund

And many, many other suggestions that I don’t recall.

the lightning bolt

I was really waiting for the feeling of that name, the one I wasn’t lukewarm over, the one that was meaningful but also easy to yell when he’s in trouble. Suddenly, Jeremy suggested

Aurick Virgil

…and that was it. I felt it.

Virgil’s Aeneid is part of the Western Canon, and he also is the one who guides Dante through Hell and Purgatory in his Divine Comedy. Virgil means “flourishing”, which for me is a perfect companion to Ephraim’s “fruitful”, and the Dante connection fits him in nicely with Beatrice.

This was the end of the debate, and the final incarnation of Aurick’s name.

a developing concept

Finding out the baby’s sex and finalizing the name have always happened simultaneously (or practically simultaneously) for us at that 20th week of pregnancy. It’s a relief for me, a bit of clarity, and gives me the space to start gathering and making what I need to prepare for the baby’s arrival (likely early October.)

If you had been in my house lately, you would hear me quietly murmuring Aurick, Aurick occasionally. This is partly to familiarize myself with the pronunciation (Jeremy informed me that I have been saying it wrong–“OW-rick” when it should be “AWE-rick”.) It’s also because there is a developing concept of this new person in my mind, though I won’t really know anything about him until we meet face-to-face in a few months. But I’m considering colors and what fabric to put in his space in our closet, and what to make his blanket out of, and all sorts of things like that.