Harper

We get A LOT of questions about why we chose to name our daughter Harper. I have been meaning to make this post for a long time, but several things reminded me of it today so here it goes. I always thought it would be really fun to choose baby names, but it turned out to be extremely stressful and really not that fun at all. There were a lot of names that I liked, but I couldn't choose that one name that I really liked and Tom and I had some difficulty agreeing on THE name.

Actually, about two thirds of the way through the pregnancy we did decide on THE name and started calling our little baby Hannah. But the more we thought about it, the more we realized that Hannah was too popular and wasn't the right name for our little girl. So we were back to the drawing board. I spent hours and hours looking through books and websites and making dozens of lists, but we couldn't make a decision. I wanted a name that was easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and not too popular but not too weird.

Earlier in the pregnancy I had mentioned the name "Harper" to Tom, but he said he didn't like it and there was no way we were going to use it. I had liked the name for a long time but I didn't think Tom would ever agree to it. About a week before Harper was born, he said (out of the blue) "I think I like Harper." But once he said that, I started to have some doubts (I am an indecisive person). We decided to wait until she was born to make a final decision, but we were pretty sure we would choose Harper. Tom let me choose her middle name and I thought that Grace sounded fantastic with Harper, so we went with that.

We really liked the association of the name with Harper Lee because To Kill a Mockingbird is a fantastic book. Plus, Atticus is a fantastic lawyer and since Tom is in law school it seemed fitting. An added bonus is that Harper Lee's birthday is April 28th and that was Harper's due date.

Since Harper was born, one of the Dixie Chicks and Lisa Marie Presley have both named their daughters Harper. I don't really mind, I think that it is a fantastic name and I don't think we're in danger of it getting too popular any time soon. Overall, I think we chose the perfect name. I am not really looking forward to choosing another perfect name in the (very, very distant) future.