The Name Game
What's in a name?
I have been asked many times what Charleigh is short for. When I tell them it's short for Charleigh they seem confused.
"Is her name Charlotte?"
Nope, her name is Charleigh June. A pretty simple name, if you ask me. This, of course, provokes questions about where the name comes from and why we'd want to give our daughter a boy's name. Here's the story behind the name....
All the men in the Gurgens family have Charles in their name. My Grandfather was Charles, Daddy is Charles Jr. My brother is Charles Chase.
We decided early on that if we had a boy his middle name would be Charles, in honor of my family. That was the easy part. But what would we do if we had a girl?
We knew that we wanted the first name to start with a C, and early on in our marriage we had settled on the name Carly. Unfortunately, Carly has become somewhat popular. We didn't want to saddle our kid down with a common name that causes them to be known by their last name. (and, we do have a fairly common last name)
When we really started trying to get pregnant we decided to change Carly to Charleigh. It was unique and honored my family, because we knew we may only have one child. We changed the spelling to look more feminine and then had to,decide on a middle name. Originally we'd decided on going with another C name, but we just weren't finding anything that really flowed.
One day, last summer, it hit me. Charleigh June. June is the name of my 93 year old grandmother. This is her third great-granddaughter and she hadn't been 'honored' yet. Not only did it flow perfectly, it also had meaning. It could be shortened to CJ if she decided she didn't like her name and there weren't very many girls named Charleigh...
At least there weren't three years ago. The week that Charleigh was born, the hospital had three baby girls born named Charleigh. (The other two were spelled Charlie). In fact, the baby in the incubator next to Charleigh was Charlie - and she was born a day prior to ours, and delivered by the same doctor.
At least I can say that we had this name chosen for quite awhile and that we didn't follow a fad - we named her after important people in our life.
We already have some thoughts on the name of baby number two, but those will be kept on the downlow until we have baby number two....
I have been asked many times what Charleigh is short for. When I tell them it's short for Charleigh they seem confused.
"Is her name Charlotte?"
Nope, her name is Charleigh June. A pretty simple name, if you ask me. This, of course, provokes questions about where the name comes from and why we'd want to give our daughter a boy's name. Here's the story behind the name....
All the men in the Gurgens family have Charles in their name. My Grandfather was Charles, Daddy is Charles Jr. My brother is Charles Chase.
We decided early on that if we had a boy his middle name would be Charles, in honor of my family. That was the easy part. But what would we do if we had a girl?
We knew that we wanted the first name to start with a C, and early on in our marriage we had settled on the name Carly. Unfortunately, Carly has become somewhat popular. We didn't want to saddle our kid down with a common name that causes them to be known by their last name. (and, we do have a fairly common last name)
When we really started trying to get pregnant we decided to change Carly to Charleigh. It was unique and honored my family, because we knew we may only have one child. We changed the spelling to look more feminine and then had to,decide on a middle name. Originally we'd decided on going with another C name, but we just weren't finding anything that really flowed.
One day, last summer, it hit me. Charleigh June. June is the name of my 93 year old grandmother. This is her third great-granddaughter and she hadn't been 'honored' yet. Not only did it flow perfectly, it also had meaning. It could be shortened to CJ if she decided she didn't like her name and there weren't very many girls named Charleigh...
At least there weren't three years ago. The week that Charleigh was born, the hospital had three baby girls born named Charleigh. (The other two were spelled Charlie). In fact, the baby in the incubator next to Charleigh was Charlie - and she was born a day prior to ours, and delivered by the same doctor.
At least I can say that we had this name chosen for quite awhile and that we didn't follow a fad - we named her after important people in our life.
We already have some thoughts on the name of baby number two, but those will be kept on the downlow until we have baby number two....
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