our baby has a name

Owen Thomas Bailey

As soon as we found out that he is a he we realized that naming him would not be an easy task – or should say, committing to his name would not be easy. I mean, a name is permanent! Although there are a handful of boy names that we like a lot, there were really only about 3 or 4 that we kept coming back to. Owen was one of them. We've liked it from early on and Thomas has always been a given, as it's Brian's middle name. Even though we haven't said so, I think we've both known for a couple weeks that his name would be Owen Thomas. It came very easy for Brian, but it took a little growing into for me.

The name Owen fits into the parameters we set – it does mean something to us, it can't be shortened, it's a first-name-first kind of name, and it's a good baby name as well as an adult name.

Owen means "young warrior" and is a variant of Eugene, which was my Pop-pop's (mom's dad) middle name. It's also the last name of a doctor who is very special to us, and has become like a grandfather to Brian. During one of their lunches, while discussing name options, Brian mentioned that he liked Owen – to which Dr. Owen laughed and said that we could use his name.

Thomas is Brian's middle name, and his mom's maiden name. It's also the last name of his Uncle, who he's always been very close to.

So that's it! There's no doubt that our son will know where his name came from, and we can only hope that he'll be as proud of it as we are!