A lot of thought went into picking the name of our first baby. There’s a lot of back-story to the name we picked: Nathaniel Mac Switzer.

As soon as we found out that we were going to have a baby, we bought a book of 60,000 baby names. Over the course of a few week, Julie and I took turns looking through the book, selecting both boy and girls names that we liked. To keep from being influenced by each others choices, I built a quick little web application where we could enter the names we liked. It would then match up the names we both agreed on, and throw out the names that we didn’t agree on.

What we ended up with was a list of fifty names (twenty-six boy names and twenty-four girl names) that we agreed on. The plan was to wait until after we found out if we were having a boy or a girl to start narrowing the list down. We would each rate the names and whichever had the highest average rating would be the name.

After we found out that we were having a boy, we went out to lunch before going on a baby boy clothes shopping spree. While sitting at lunch, Julie said, “I think I know what his name is…. Nathan.” I said, “Ok.” It was on our list and I liked that he had options. Later in life, he could decide if he wanted to be Nate, Nathan, or Nathaniel. Plus, saying Baby Nate was just cute.

We decided to keep the name a secret from everyone. There are a few reasons for this. First, we told everyone that we were having a boy, but we we wanted to keep something a secret. By telling people that it was a boy, they could buy boy-colored things. Second, we didn’t want people’s opinions on the name. Nathaniel isn’t a weird name or anything, but Julie is a teacher, so while we were discussing names, she’d often say, “No, I taught a _______. They were evil.” Or I would say, “I like the name _________, but it reminds me of so-and-so.” And as much as we’d like to think that people could keep their opinions to themselves, we know that people like to share their input, so we thought it was best to just keep the name a secret. Because who would honestly say, “Oh, Baby Nate is so cute… too bad I know a Nate that beats his wife.”

Side note: We have a friend, Cristina, who had a baby girl a few years ago. She was naming her Sadie. Most people called Sadie are named something else, like Sarah, and Sadie is just the nickname. However, Cristina was going with just Sadie. She told us that way too many people told her, “I have a dog named Sadie,” when she’d tell them her babies name.

So we had our first name, but we still needed a middle name. We thought about honoring Julie’s dad, Julian, somehow since he passed away during the pregnancy. But the Juli-’s ran deep into the family roots and Julie wanted to get away from it. Plus, there isn’t much you can do for boys besides Julian or Julius. Then we considered my side of the family. My grandfather’s and father’s middle names was Edward and my middle name is Eric. There seemed to be an E trend, so I asked my mom if that was a family tradition thing. She said no, but we still considered E names. Then we also considered other completely unrelated names. Nothing ever really seemed to stick. But we’ll get back to the middle name in a minute…

Nathaniel means “God given.” Julie got pregnant while her dad was in the hospital. When we found out we were expecting, Julie told her dad, but didn’t tell the rest of the family. We wanted to wait to make sure she didn’t miscarry. The same day of the first ultrasound confirming that we were having a baby, we had to rush from Tallahassee to Orlando because Julie’s dad wasn’t doing well. We told her mom and brother the great news, and the next day, Julie’s dad passed away. Even though God took away Julie’s dad, He was giving us a baby to carry on the family tree.

We chose the middle name, Mac, because it’s short and cute and has a lot of meaning behind it. First, Julie’s maiden name is McDonald. People who knew Julie’s dad called him Mr. Mac. When we got married, everyone called us the McSwitzers, and when we said we were having a baby, they called it Baby McSwitzer. So, Mac is a throwback to Julie’s dad and maiden name. Mac means “son of.”

So our son’s name means, “God given son of Switzer.” Sounds pretty powerful, huh?

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