B is for Brantley

So excited Baby's name is no longer a secret!  Whew!  We did pretty well at keeping the secret with the exception of a couple people.  Our backyard neighbors knew after he caught us spray painting the letters in our garage (and shared the news with his wife), and our friend Jamie knew, as I forget to take the name off the wall of the nursery the day of our maternity photos.  Oops!  She did snap a pretty cool photo though....

Before we painted the letters black.
Anyway, here's the story behind the name Brantley Carter...

Growing up a Sarah (and being one of five in my graduating class of 130), my goal was to pick a name that was fairly uncommon, but not off-the-wall weird.  I always hated being "Sarah F."  I wanted our son to be known by his first name and first name only.

Enter Brantley.  The idea came from the country singer Brantley Gilbert.  Not that we love him (he's okay), but did love the name when we saw it scroll across our radio waaaaaay back last fall--even before I was pregnant!

We didn't officially decide to use the name until about a month ago.  We (or I) felt the need to "explore other options" before making any decisions, but together, we kept going back to Brantley.  It was the only name we both really, really liked.

Imagine my disappointment when I came across this article by the Social Security Administration stating that the name Brantley made the biggest jump in the boy category for the year 2011.  Booo.  Looks like our Brantley might not be the only one.  Oh well.  We still love the name!

Craig likes to shorten it to Brant...and says that's his plan.  I've never been a fan of nicknames.  If you want your kid to be called by something specific, then name him that.  If I wanted him to be referred to as Brant, I would name him Brant.

But whatever.  I will call him Brantley.  The hubs can call him Brant.  And you can call him whichever you like.  Brant{ley}, himself, can someday decide which he prefers!

I did worry slightly about our son's initials: BS.  I hope he doesn't get made fun of for that.  But, kind of cool if you just use his first initial with last name, B.Sides.  You know, like 'besides'. :)

Hey, it's better than some of the names suggested by my students:

Parallel (Sides)
Congruent (Sides)
In (Sides)
Out (Sides)

Clever kids, they are!

Other favorites of mine were as follows:

Broxton (inspiration from Royals pitcher, Jonathan Broxton)
Brayson/Braycin
Braylen
Grayson (the other main contender and only other favorite that Craig liked also)

(I'm not sure why I like B names so much...)

Brantley's middle name, Carter, has no significance.  It was a favorite of Craig's.  I was fine with Carter as a middle name, but not a first.  Too common in recent years.

Brantley Carter Sides.  Full initials: BCS.  We both like college football, so it only makes sense!  Even though the BCS is going away and people hate it anyway.  I still like the sports connection.

If I got my wish, all of our kids' names would start with the same letter, but the hubs thinks that's stupid.  I guess I have a couple years before Baby #2's arrival to convince him otherwise. :)

Here's some more pictures of his room!  And the newborn photo props I have!






 

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