Actual Name Sources Of Our Children

In my recent posts I suggested that the names of our less-than-two-month-old twins were just plucked out of think air. Of course that was a bit of a lie, as shown by my wife’s post on the same subject on Facebook. I include it below for the record.


What’s in a name? I have been asked a few times about the origin of our children’s names so I thought I would share it with you here.

Edith Lenore Petty

Several years ago, when Matt and I were first starting to talk about having children, I had a dream that a little girl came up to me and said, “Hi mommy. I’m your daughter. My name is Edith.” Now, this was not a name I had ever thought about before but it’s the kind of name I like and so I decided that she could have the name she told me she wanted.

Lenore is a family name. It is my mother and my niece’s middle name. It is from “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe.

Arthur Elliott Petty

We knew both babies would have their father’s last name and not mine so we decided to stick with a British theme for names. Arthur is simply a name we liked a lot. We then went to Wikipedia and found a bunch of Arthurs throughout history and fiction that we both found intriguing. Chief among them Arthur Conan Doyle, Art Garfunkel, Arthur Miller and Arthur Dent. Bonus: Harpo Marx’s first name is actually Arthur.

Elliott (double L, double T) is for Elliott Smith, my beloved songbird. If you know me a little bit then you know how important this artist is to me. It seemed fitting to name my son after him. Well, middle name at least.

And there you have it. Two kids, four names, the weight of history on their young shoulders.

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