The Story of How Fern Winter Got Her Name
I love hearing the story behind people’s names and I always knew that I wanted my baby to have a strong name that meant something one day.
I had always loved the name Audrey, because of it’s meaning, “noble grace” and I loved the name Harper for many years, because of Harper Lee (author of To Kill a Mockingbird – a very important book), but when it came time to start throwing around names for our baby while I was pregnant neither name really seemed quite right.
My husband and I had numerous disagreements over name choices. Basically, I came up with a lot of names and he didn’t like/vetoed all of them. But, one day the stars aligned when I mentioned, “What about Fern?”
Craig paused and I could see he was mulling it over. After a moment he said, “I like it!” Fern was the name of a girl that a friend of mine had met one day while walking around in Portland and she’d told me about what a cute name she thought it was. I agreed, especially when I remembered that I had a great grandmother (she died before I could ever meet her) named Fern – a nice little family nod.
The only thing left now was to come up with a middle name and that proved to be even more difficult than coming up with a first name! One day I sat down and wrote out literally 30 middle names alongside Fern. Craig hated every. single. one. I gave up. Maybe Fern wouldn’t even have a middle name. I supposed that this wouldn’t be the end of the world since it’s not like middle names really get used all that often.
On January 15th, I went into labor and we still didn’t have a middle name picked out, not that I was really thinking about that at the time. I had a little moment of panic before we left for the birthing center and to distract me, Craig said, “Hey! Have you thought of any other middle names? What about ‘Winter’?” His reasoning was that it was supposed to snow (the first snow of the year in Portland) that day and it would be pretty cool if it worked out that way, especially considering that we’d gotten married four years earlier on the first snow fall of that year.
Well, as fate would have it, Fern was in fact born that very afternoon during the first snowfall of winter, and with the significance of getting married during the first snowfall, and the fact that we started dating in winter, got married in the winter and have always loved spending time in the snow together, we thought it was a pretty perfect name for our little one.
And that is how Miss Fern Winter got her name.
How did you choose your baby’s name?
Lauren Hartmann is the founder of The Little Things We Do, a blog about life and adventures in Portland Oregon. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook, or catch up on all of her posts here on Babble.
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I wrote a whole post on this: http://hadesarrow.com/blog/2012/01/03/naming-ender/ We debated for months, but now I can’t imagine him being named anything else.
Awwwwww I love this story!
I love this! My daughters name is Audrey, with Lorna as her middle Name. Lorna was my great-grandmother, who was ecstatic to find out I was pregnant, and called me every week to hear how my pregnancy was progressing. The day before I was scheduled for my ultrasound to find out the gender, she lost her battle with cancer. It seemed like a nice nod to have her name in there.
I like the way Fern Winter had her name chosen.
When I had my oldest daughter, as a single mom, I had 5 first names & 1 middle name chosen. For the first day of life the nurses called her “Somebody Nicole”. My father who shows preference to nothing ever, said he liked one name over the others. His 1st granddaughter became Brittany Nicole.
My middle daughter, well it was the only name we could agree on. Chelsea Leigh. Chelsea was actually one of the names I had leftover from daughter number 1. Although this time I had wanted the middle name Elizabeth.
When it came to my son I knew he would be named after my grandfather. No ifs, ands or buts! James Thomas it was!!
Now that I have 2 granddaughters it kills me as my children are choosing names for their babies. I am very vocal about telling them the names I dislike. Luckily, the names in the end aren’t so bad. My husband & I have several names chosen that we like for if we ever adopt a baby in the future.
My SO would not let it go. He kept bugging me, so finally I just gave in. Truly, though, it meant a lot to him to “dub” him Finnegan. I think it made him feel like he was actually doing something for baby!
Oh my goodness, I could have written this post myself! My favorite names have always been Audrey and Harper and my husband has hated everything else I could come up with! We decided on Tommie Evelyn when we visited his late grandmother’s (on his mother’s side) grave site (she had passed when he was very young) and I saw her name “Tommie Evelyn” on her grave marker. I secretly thought to myself that it was the CUTEST name in the world. Many months later I brought it up and my husband thought it was such a cute name and loved the idea of commemorating his grandmother. When we told my husband’s mom that that is what we decided to name our daughter, she cried she was so happy with our decision. I can’t wait to meet my Tommie Evelyn!