And We Shall Call Him...

Zane Ezekiel Ray


Well, we did it. We named a person. If you will recall, I blogged about baby naming a few months ago. You’ll remember we didn’t want to just name a baby, but we wanted to name a person. Give him/her a strong name, one that would stand the test of time; one that wouldn’t seem silly when he/she was 45 years old. One that would sound great when he was up to bat in the World Series. One that folks could take seriously when she was sitting at the head of the boardroom table. I think we hit it square on the head.

I have to confess, we didn’t know our top 2 choices for each gender until we were on our way to the hospital. We named our little bundle in the operating room about 10 minutes after he was born and we think we came up with a winner. Question is: did it pass all of our tests?

• The 40-year-old career man/woman test: as this test is fairly self-explanatory, and subjective, we think we nailed this one. Zane is a good VP or CEO name. It’s unforgettable, but not juvenile. Zane Ray: sounds like a power broker.

• The Yell Test: go ahead, yell it. We did. Several times, in fact. It comes out of your mouth nicely, doesn’t it? Almost like butter.

• The Graduation Announcement Test: Zane Ezekiel Ray (said stately over the loudspeaker.) Yep, that works. Sounds like a kid ready to go tackle college.

• The Athlete Name Test (over the Intercom at say, the World Series): Now batting for the St. Louis Cardinals, your shortstop... #8... Zane Ray. Great jock name, but also sounds strong and intellectual.

• The 4-year-old test aka the Tripp test: As stated previously, this isn't what Tripp thinks of the name, but mainly what he thinks of when he hears the name. When Tom told Tripp he had a brother named Zane, Tripp smiled and said “cool.” Enough said.

• The Tooth Fairy Test: this is essentially what the child's name would sound like when he/she says it after losing a bunch of teeth, as kids are prone to do. No s’s, so we’re good.

• The "was she/he a slut/jerk in high school/college/other parts of your life test?": The only Zane I know is my uncle (whom our little guy is name after) and Zane is his middle name. He's a great guy, my favorite uncle, in fact. So, no problem there. (Tom didn’t know any Zanes either.)

• The "how the name sounds with a thick Southern Accent" test: Say it with the thickest Ellie Mae accent you can muster. It doesn’t sound weird at all. Sure, it has a long A sound, but not too bad, even for my sweet mom with the thick Southern Accent.

• The "which one are you again?" test: We wanted a distinct name, not one where there would be several kids with the same name in his class. Do you know any Zanes? Yeah, neither did we.

In all, we are very pleased with our name choice. We named him after a wonderful man (who happens to be my Dad’s twin brother) and his middle name is my maiden name, so he is named after my dad. That was very important to me. So you see, I didn’t really have anything to stress over. And, I told you we would probably name the baby John or Jane. Hmmm…. Zane is derived from John (according to my baby name book and it also means “Gift from God”) and it also rhymes with Jane. Perhaps I knew his name all along.