The name game

Nadine and I spent countless evenings discussing names. If you consider me rejecting every name she suggested a discussion. As the months went on I kept shooting down every single suggestion made by her, friends and family. Nothing resonated with me.

Because I wouldn’t agree to her (100’s of) suggestions, Nadine (jokingly) threatened to name our baby Rudiger unless I became more open to her suggestions. Or at least offer some suggestions of my own.

We both liked Lucas but knew that the nickname Luke was inevitable. I’m not a Starwars fan and didn’t want the association so Lucas was out.

She wanted a name that could be pronounced the same in German and English. I wanted a name that was unique but that is spelled just like it sounds.

The topic was ongoing and it seemed everyone wanted to add their 2 cents. At work Nadine and co-worker

Sue put a bunch of (random) names on a dry erase board. Arrows to the left of a name showed Nadine’s opinon of that name, arrows on the right showed how I felt. (No arrow indicated neutral) Oh and lets not forget about the Excel spreadsheet that Nadine created to keep track of it all.

When we visited Germany Nadine’s family was partial to Bruno, which was great grandpas name. Bruno has become somewhat of a nickname ever since.

Nadine liked a bunch of different names but narrowed it down to a few. Noah and Dominik.

I on the other hand only liked two names. Asher and Tyler.

After some intense debate, and some help from a website called Nymbler we found a name that we both could agree on. The site allowed us to input up to 6 names that we liked and it would then offer suggestions that were similar to the ones we input. We entered Lucas, Bruno, Noah, Dominik, Asher, and Tyler. One of the suggestions offered by the site was Luka. We both liked the name.

We had previously talked about and agreed on Louis for his middle name. Louis was the middle name given to my grandpa, my dad and me. I wanted to honor my grandpa and my dad by passing it down to my son.

Whew! So to put it all together…

Luka Louis Perrin is the full name of our son.

P.S. – Yes, we know thats the same name of that funky looking doctor on ER.