The Story of "Holly"

This is the story of how we came up with Holly's name.

Though we were originally hoping for a boy, one big relief in finding out we were going to have a girl was that girl names seem infinitely easier to pick than boys.  Looking through baby apps, I quickly discovered something about the names I gravitated towards... they were all "lee" names.  Seriously, some of my contenders -- Hailey, Hallie, Holly, Caley, Callie, Kylie.  Jason nixed most of them, saying they didn't sound like "real" names.  Still, they stayed on my list.

We went back and forth with names, usually immediately hating the names the other suggested.  I won't list them here, because I don't want to hurt any feelings (especially if you have those names for hypothetical or real children), but we just couldn't agree.  Even the few times we both agreed, we usually ended up talking ourselves out of it.  Several were just too "out there" for me or too commonplace (we wanted a happy medium).

We were at an impasse.  We tried to get Tyler to pick (That's become a new favorite thing for us, especially when picking restaurants.  What?  It could work for baby sister, too!), but after we'd name our "big 6" (3 were Jason picks, 3 were Megan picks, none had been vetoed, but none had been highly favored), he'd just say her name should be "Baby Sister."  Hmm, if it worked for the Berenstain Bears, it could work for the Selfs, right?  Right?!?


Two weeks before my due date, my nephew Hudson was born.  I talked to Tyler about it, sharing that his new cousin's name was "Hudson."  I asked again, "Tyler, what's baby sister's name going to be?"  And then my sweet sweet boy said, "Holly."  Well, to be honest, he said "Hawwwley" (he's gonna have his mama's drawl, I believe).  No prompting or anything.  I whipped out my phone, pressed record, and asked him again.  He said it again, "Holly."  I very quickly sent it to Jason, saying we had to name her Holly.  The fact that "Holly" was one of my 3 picks, well, that's just a coincidence!

Hudson was born the Saturday before Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving morning at breakfast, we once again discussed names and somehow landed on Holly.  I was ecstatic!  Her middle name, Coraline, was a name both of us liked, but we had ruled it out as a first name.  I was concerned that if it was her first name, she'd suffer from a lifetime of being called "Caroline," and that would just be annoying.  So we made it her middle name instead!

Four months in, I've said it about a million times now, and I still love the name!  My sweet, sweet Holly. :)