What's in a Name?

Many have asked how we came up with Camden's name. I wish I could say that we chose his name because it has some profound meaning or symbolism in our life, but that's not really the case. We fall into the "We just liked the sound of it" camp.

There were, however, a set of criteria that we used to come to the decision we did:

1. "Don't make me spell it!" We know from experience that Camden will have to spell his last name enough in his life that we didn't want him to have to spell his first name for people all the time, too. That said, there have been a couple of people already that have asked how to spell his name. Most people have been able to spell out just by sounding it out. I suppose you could spell his name with a 'K', but we think his name pretty much spells itself.


2. "Multiple Pronunciations" Kim and I also know that if you're not familiar with our last name it can be construed with many different pronunciations. I've heard them all including Noo-jen, Nah-guy-en, N-guy-en, Nuh-gee-en, and even Noo-jent. So we wanted a first name that was compatible with whatever pronunciation someone might choose for our last name, including the correct pronunciation, "Win".
   


3. "You talkin' to me?" We all know that some names are more common than others. There's nothing wrong with those names, but we wanted a name that wasn't too unusual, but wasn't going to cause him to have to turn his head everytime someone was calling for another child with the same name. So we consulted the Social Security website to see what the most common names were. In the last 10 years, it has steadily become more popular moving from 603rd in 1997 to 221st this year. The fact that no one was able to guess his name before he was born was also somewhat reassuring that it wasn't too popular.
   


4. "Sound Check" One article we read on how to choose a name suggested that we go to a park and call out the name. We went to our local park and tried it out. There weren't any kids around at the time, but rule #3 above seemed to feel right and we liked how it sounded when we said his name.
   
   
5. "Good Initials" While not the most important, we wanted him to have nice looking and nice sounding initials. Ideally, he would have a first and middle name condusive to a nickname like JJ, or CJ, or KG, etc. But we also didn't want him to have initials that would cause him to be made fun of in the school yard like Christopher Anthony Nguyen (CAN), or Theodore Oscar Nguyen (TON). NOTE: None of those names were actually in the running.
   

So we took time on one of our many roadtrips to brainstorm some possible names. At the time, we didn't know the sex so we came up with girl and boy names. Of the boy names, I REALLY wanted Eric. I wanted to be able to just call him "E" and I really liked the name Eric. I call my good friend Eric, "E", all the time. Kim, however, had some childhood classmates named Eric that made it diffucult for her to disassociate them from our son.

Kim and I both really like Ethan alot. Unfortunately, so do a lot of other people. It did not fit rule #3 above. For those with children named Ethan, we think it is a great name. We would have been happy to name our son Ethan, but we do have rules to follow.

Somehow, somewhere I pulled out the name Camden. Many who know of my baseball stadium escapades may think that Camden Yards in Baltimore was my favorite stadium and that's where the name came from. If we named him after my favorite baseball stadium I've been to, we would have named him "AT&T Park Nguyen". That didn't pass rule #4, the Sound Check. Kim liked the name Camden almost right away. After testing it over a few weeks by talking to her belly, we were convinced that it was right.

We had a little more trouble with his middle name. This was where rule #5 began to come into play. Kim came up with Kyle and that seemed to sound good. We kept repeating it over and over, "Camden Kyle Nguyen, Camden Kyle..." It seemed to flow nicely. It met rules #1, 2, 3, 4, and (kinda) 5.

So what do you think? I doubt anyone will have the heart to tell us they don't like the name, but it's okay if you don't like it. We know we can't please everyone. Kim and I love Camden and we love his name.