What's in a name...

Naming a child, so it turns out, is pretty complicated. The process of picking a name has really been going on since the idea of possibly trying to get pregnant came onto our radar. Well, for me anyway. When we'd take a long trip in the car, I'd look at highway signs, names of towns, names of streets, etc. and if something struck me as being a good name, I'd send myself an email and save it for my ever-expanding list of names. I also have the luxury of coming across many names in my job. I sometimes conduct title searches which require examining public records over a period of about 60 years or so. You end up seeing some pretty unusual names in this process. I'd even pay attention to names I came across in catalogs, magazines, books, etc. Every name I found that I thought might be acceptable one day would be emailed to myself. I can tell you, I have compiled quite a list over the past year or so. An untraditional approach, perhaps, but it was a start.

Finding the "perfect" name is more complicated, as it turns out, than just finding names that you like. Particularly if you are like us and think that keeping family names going is a neat thing to do. This became particularly complicated because, as some of you know, Casey's name is a shortened version of Kenneth Corman Otis, III. So we have been struggling with whether or not to add a Kenneth Corman Otis, IV to the world. I think this has been a real burden on Casey who admires his father more than I can possibly articulate in this blog. I decided to leave this delicate subject in Casey's hands. He grappled with it for a number of weeks, but after talking to his dad, who was very gracious on the topic, he felt comfortable making the decision not to name the baby KCO IV.

After this decision had been made, out came my list of names. There were some that Casey did not like, there were some that he did, and there were some names that he liked that had not made my list that were added. And that's how we came to find ourselves with a short list of names.

I swear it was unintentional (at least on my part), but it turns out that we have chosen a name that will result in his initials being R.S. I decided to tease my parents and my sister with the initials, so I sent the initials to them. It was pretty funny getting back various guesses from them. My sister was the first to point out that R.S. could stand for Red Sox. This had never occurred to me, but once she pointed that out, I was pretty sure that my darling husband had scammed me into thinking that I was a part of the naming rights, but that he really had planned to get the Boston Red Sox into the name somehow, even if I would not agree to name him Boston. He's smarter than I give him credit for, and trust me, I think he's pretty darn smart already!!!

And so it has been settled that our first son will be named Riley Shailer Otis.

Riley is not a name that has any special family significance. It's simply a name that both Casey and I really liked. Truth be told, although I have heard the name many times and have always liked it, it made my list after I came across it in a Pottery Barn Kids catalog. It is also the first name of the starting quarterback at Wake Forest (Riley Skinner), who coincidentally went to Casey's high school (the Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida), so we feel like that means he is somehow destined to be not only a great athlete, but a smart guy as well.

Shailer is a family name from Casey's side. Shailer is Casey's late great uncle who he admired enormously (Shailer and his wife Kay are also the people who taught Casey how to golf). I never had the privelege of meeting Shailer, but I understand he was a really neat man. The two stories that I have repeatedly heard about him are that (1) he was on the ski patrol during World War II and (2) he would "open the season" at Drakes Island every summer by playing the bugle.

We have also been told by Shailer's wife that Shailer was given his name because his grandfather (I think) wanted the Shailer name (which originally was a last name) to be carried on. As an incentive, he offered $100 to each of his children that named their child Shailer ($100, at the time, was a very significant amount of money -- I think Casey said he calculated it and it was equivalent to about $20,000 in current money). I believe there were 3 or 4 Shailers in the family...