What's in a name?

Nolan Lucas

A lot of people have asked us about Nolan's name. When we found out we were having a boy, we knew we were facing an uphill battle as we didn't have any boy name favorites going into our pregnancy. As I mentioned back in this post, we bought a baby book in hopes of finding the perfect boy's name. We both independently read through the book and made a list of our favorite names. Then we compared lists. We made note of all names that overlapped, and then kept around any others that the other person was "ok" with, while eliminating names right away that one person vetoed off the bat. It was interesting - there were some names we each "knew" the other person was going to pick, there were names that we had talked about in passing before, and then there was Nolan.

The Nolan portion of our Baby Book

We were both kinda shocked that we both had Nolan on our lists. We had never spoken about the name before, but somehow we were both drawn to it. We both felt that (although trendy right now), names ending in -en or -an sounded good with our last name. I liked how the name was mentioned to be "timeless" as you wouldn't know what decade someone named Nolan was born in. There are old and young Nolans out there. Most people think of Nolan Ryan (former MLB pitcher) or Nolan Smith (former Duke basketball player), which themselves are over 40 years apart in age (and also different races!). We also liked that it doesn't lead to a nickname as there were names that we liked, but didn't like the nickname or vice versa, which I feel would just be annoying when people called your kid a name you didn't like because it's a known nickname. It also gave a nod to my Irish heritage, which I thought was nice since he'll have the Bolivian last name.There are several meanings of the name listed, including "Noble" and "Champion". After the night we compared lists and talked about Nolan, I couldn't get it out of my head - it felt right to me right away. Joe, needed a bit more time to sit on it as he wasn't sure right away if it "went" with our last name. He didn't have any better suggestions during that time, and I think he got used to hearing the Irish-sounding first name with the Spanish-sounding last name.

His middle name - Lucas - was a name that has always been on the table for us. I remember us talking about mutually liking this name since before we were married. We debated about having it as a first name, but I wasn't crazy about the first and last names ending in "s" - it just didn't have a great ring to it. We also prefer Lucas to Luke, which he would inevitably end up being called. Lucas means "Light" which I love (especially in combination with Noble) and Joe loved how it is spelled the same in Spanish and English. This is our nod to family, with it being the male form of Lucy, my paternal grandmother's name, whom I was very close with, and sharing the same root as Joe's brother and uncle Luis. It is a classic name, although seemingly gaining in popularity right now (we know a few friends with Luke's).



All in all, several months later... we are still in love with Nolan's name. It seems to fit him (whatever that means!) whereas a lot of our other "finalist" names don't when I look at him. He's the only Nolan in his class at daycare (and even within the entire school), which is nice. There are a few repeats of names in his class (Ella is one I know). I hope Nolan continues to be a name that is recognizable to people (no one ever asks how to spell it), but not a name that is overly popular for this time period (like Britney in the 1980's for example). Only time will tell!

Our Noble Light