There are some parents for whom choosing a baby name is an afterthought, or even a dreaded but necessary task. I am not one of those parents! My love for baby names goes all the way back to the birth of my brother Austin when I was six: I loved being involved in choosing his name, and after Austin’s birth I latched on to the Baby Name Book that had been our reference guide as one of the most treasured books of our home library. As an adult I’ve continued to stay up to date on current naming trends, and I’ve been known to ask new acquaintances (and occasionally complete strangers) to share the stories behind their names or the names they’ve chosen for their children. I’ve even gotten to be involved in the naming of a few of my friends’ kids! So for me, choosing names for each of my babies has been one of the best parts of bringing new beings into the world.
Luke and I began discussing potential names the very day we saw those two pink lines. Having already adhered to some pretty specific patterns with our other three kids’ names (you can read Charleston’s name story here and Kalinda and Sullivan’s name story here), it was important that we stick to the guidelines we’d inadvertently established for ourselves. To fit with our family’s naming trends, this baby’s first name would need to: 1) have three syllables; 2) be relatively obscure; 3) have an obvious and familiar-sounding nickname. Bonus points if this name could contain any or all of the letters L, A, and N, as these three letters all appear in Charleston, Sullivan, and Kalinda.
Girl names come more easily to us and we quickly narrowed our Girl Name List down to three choices, all of which had been strong contenders when we were choosing a name for Kalinda: Juliet (this is Luke’s favorite girl name and the name we’ve been saying for years would be our choice for a hypothetical second daughter); Karalyn (my favorite girl name of all time that we’d previously vetoed because of its similarity to Charleston; with two other names now in the mix, that similarity felt like less of an issue); and Holiday (a name that felt a little “out there” but that we both adored, especially with the nickname option of Holly). We ultimately settled on Holiday Nicole for a baby girl. . . but as you know, we did NOT give birth to a second daughter, and though I was thrilled to be having a third boy, I was very sad to say goodbye to that beautiful name!
Once baby’s gender was confirmed, I compiled a list of boy names I liked and that checked all of our boxes. Highlights from the list are Anderson, Atticus, Calloway, Indio, Montgomery, Nicholson, Nikolai, Remington, and Whitaker. (The name Dixon—a riff on my maiden name of Dix, and a name I pushed hard for with both of our other boys—was also on that list, despite being an outlier to our naming rules.) Luke narrowed my shortlist down to his two favorites: Nikolai and Calloway. It would have been easy to rule out Calloway because it repeated Charleston’s first initial (something we weren’t thrilled about) and because the go-to nickname of Cal was too similar to Kali; but we really loved the name, and we could solve the bigger nickname problem by using the nickname Clay instead. For several weeks, we thought we had our name!
Then Luke threw me a curveball when he told me how much he was loving the name Anderson. That had been my personal favorite from my original list and I was excited that he’d come around to it. Calloway was scrapped and Anderson took the lead. But when we shared our choice with the kids, they were all VERY concerned that Anderson lacked the middle “L” that their names all share. Luke jokingly suggested that maybe we could go with Alderson (an entirely made-up name) instead. We laughed. . . until we realized how much we loved it! We struggled to find an appropriate nickname, but Charleston came up with “Ollie” and it stuck. As I entered my ninth month of pregnancy, we were almost certain that we’d go with Alderson. There was a slight chance we might revert to Anderson instead, simply because we worried that Alderson and especially the non-obvious nickname of “Ollie” could be confusing to people hearing his name for the first time. With either first name, we planned for his middle name to be Levi (though Shepherd and Quade had also been strong Middle Name contenders).
As you know, we did NOT name our baby Alderson OR Anderson. The short explanation is Pregnancy Hormones. The longer answer is that, as the pregnancy progressed and got very difficult in the final couple of months, it became increasingly important to me that a part of my own name be given to this child I was carrying. He had now spent more time gestating than any of my other kids, and I was feeling exceptionally bonded to this baby whose wild movements were the drumbeat of my every waking (and sleeping) moment. I became convinced that we needed to give Baby Boy the middle name of Dix. Unfortunately Luke did not share my convictions, and we tiptoed around the issue for a while until, just two weeks before my due date, Luke and I had one of the biggest arguments of our marriage. (Side note: Luke and I almost never fight, and the fact that our biggest-ever argument centered on a name choice is very on brand for me.) After two days of giving each other the silent treatment, Luke finally conceded to compromising with the middle name of Dixon. The only problem was that I really did not like the flow of Alderson Dixon. And so it was back to the drawing board.
Another option for incorporating my own name was to return to previous favorite Nikolai, a male variation of my middle name that satisfied every one of our predetermined rules. I loved the idea of using Ryan (Luke’s middle name) for a middle, so that baby’s name would have components from each of us. It was decided . . . until, three days before he would make his appearance, Luke pointed out that Nikolai sounded very Russian, and did we want to go with a Russian-sounding name in our current political climate? Nikolai actually has Greek roots, not Russian ones, but Luke had a good point and Nikolai was quickly swapped out for Nicholson. . . . and then changed to Nickelson because I decided I liked that spelling better.
Ironically (or maybe providentially?) this had been our second choice when naming Sullivan, so our meandering road to a final name brought us right back to where we had been five years earlier. Luke and I settled on Nickelson Ryan mere hours before I would go into labor (I’m almost certain Nico waited to come until his name had been decided!), and we chose not to share his name with anyone else until after he was born, on the off chance that we would change our minds once again. But the minute we saw him, I knew we’d made the right choice. This WAS our little Nico, not Ollie or Andy or Clay or any of the other names we’d considered. I loved hearing his siblings greet him by name when they came to the hospital, and eventually even Charleston (who had REALLY been set on Alderson/”Ollie”) came around to our choice.
Nickelson does not appear in any of the Baby Name resources I’ve scoured, but it stems from the Greek word nikē which means “victory.” Ryan means “little king” or “descendent of the king.” I adore everything about our little Descendent of the King, including his precious name and our meandering road to choosing it. I pray that he grows into his identity as a descendent of the one Great King, and that he goes on to achieve many great victories for God’s Kingdom.