I am going to be 100% honest on this one and pray that one day London doesn't one day hate me for giving him this name.
As most of you may know my little boys name is London. He was actually named about 4 years before he was even conceived. Mike and I started picking our baby names 6 months after we started dating. This may seem a little quick for some people but it was fun and exciting to us. Since we were in a long distance relationship pretty much from the get go, we had to be creative to keep our relationship current. I would get random one word texts, emails, and instant messages from Mike a few times a month. They would simply consist of a name..."Alexander" or "Tristan" (both of which I vetoed as first names). I would also send him those same messages, and trust me he ruled out quite a few also. Some of my favorites that Mike vetoed were Eli, Jude, and Hunter (boys) and Savannah, Melina, and Danica (girls). As the years went by we developed a list of names that we both liked. Some were names we both REALLY liked, and others were names that one LOVED but the feeling was not mutual. Those were moved to the lesser "middle name list". When it was all said and done we had a boys name and a girls name picked out by 2004. Ok, ok, we actually had 3 girls names and 3 baby boys names picked out by then, but we want 3 kids so we wanted to make sure to cover all of them.
Flash forward through marriage and a whole lot of infertility stuff to September of 2008 when we found out we were having a boy. Like a good list keeping couple, we consulted our list and defaulted to baby boy name #1 (seriously, I'm reading this and making fun of myself right now). Baby boy name #1- London Michael.
Sadly over the 4 years since we decided on that name, London had kind of become a girls name. No thanks to the super cute girl on the popular Disney series The Suit.e Life of Z.ach and Co.dy. However even after the social security administration website revealed that London was ranked #121 for girls and #517 for boys, Mike was not willing to compromise. We picked the name and we were going to stick to it. I agreed with this name all the way up until it became REAL. I called my belly London on numerous occasions and never once doubted my name choice until the ultrasound tech exclaimed "It's a Boy!". About 2 weeks after that ultrasound, my sister called me on her way to have a baby gift monogrammed and said "how sure are you about the name London?" I quickly lied and said, " 100% POSITIVE".
All I could think of was that my son was going to be named my generations equivalent to a boy named Ashley. It's a pretty name, yet extremely popular for the opposite sex. It's a lot like naming a girl, Ryan or Randy. Please don't get me wrong, I loved the name London, but I worried about him getting picked on or later hating his name. However in Feb of 2009 we threw caution to the wind, and named our first born son London.When I saw him for the very first time I immediately had doubts, yet I never uttered a word.
Like most pregnant women, I had certain preconcieved notions about what my child would look like. I have dark hair and green eyes and my husband is Puerto Rican with dark brown hair and eyes. I just figured that my children would have brown hair and brown eyes. Puerto Rican trumps Caucasian, right?. WRONG!!! London came out with red hair and green eyes.
Our second boys name is (will be) Holden. Oh how I love the name Holden. When I think of Holden I think of a little red haired freckle faced boy. I think of well...London. I never said anything about my baby name regret. I did indeed write L-O-N-D-O-N on his birth certificate. So as far as I was concerned it was a done deal! I never once thought of actually changing his name once he was here. I did call him Holden once or twice when no one was looking just to see how it felt.
It didn't help that London's not a very easy name to make a nickname for.
Lonnie? NO THANK YOU!
Don? Not close enough to his actual name.
Lundie? Really people? REALLY?!?!
His nickname would later become Lun-ing. Which is equally as bad as any of the others listed above, but I LOVE it now that he is here. (Thanks Calli!)
It wasn't until he was about 5 weeks old that he really became LONDON to me. The first few times he smiled at me it started feeling right. The first time that he almost rolled off the couch and I yelled "LONDON!" from across the room, it became permanent. I don't for one second regret naming him London now. That is his name and it fits now. I can't imagine if he was named Holden, Eli or even Jude.
This is, and will forever be, what the name LONDON looks like to me.