What's In a Name

My newest post is about why you have the name you have. My sister Beth has challenged me to post a blog about why Matt, Josh and I have the names we have.


Matthew Spencer McKenzie

When I asked Matt why he was named Matthew he told me he didn’t know. So I emailed his mom and dad and they had some very fun facts to tell me. So very fun in fact I have decided to post the email.

Since we did not know if we were having a boy or a girl, we had to come up with a lot of options for names. I remember agreeing on most of the girl names, Melinda and Melissa are two I recall, but we did not see eye to eye on the boy names. Don always had something he did not like about a name I came up with. For example: If we named him Wade, when we went to the lake, everyone would joke "there's Wade in the water". If we named him Justin, he would be called "just in time". See what I had to put up with. :) We came really close to naming him Casey Dean, but finally agreed on Matthew and I liked the way it sounded with McKenzie. We knew all along the middle name if we had a boy would be Spencer (my maiden name). Don's Mom had used family names for middle names and we liked that idea. Here's a funny story on my brother Jim. When we called to tell him we had a baby boy and his name was Matthew Spencer, Jim asks "What's his middle name?"

Don sounds a lot like myself I tried to make sure it wasn’t a name that could be easily messed with. I guess Matt married someone a little like his dad. I know Mat has told me that he was always glad he could go by Matthew or Matt. He said when he was younger he really didn’t like Matthew at all. Names I have heard people call Matt include Matthew, Matt, Harry, Mattie, Tommy and Kenzie. I have a really bad habit of calling Matt a different name all the time. I guess when Josh gets older I better stick to his name so when people ask he won’t say something crazy.

Jena Marie McKenzie (Younger)

When I think back of what mom and dad have told me about how my name was picked it’s not the same story. Dad has said it was after His mom Ramona Jean Younger. He said the just reworked the middle name. When I asked mom she said we wanted a “J” name to match your brother Jason. They also wanted the twin’s names to start with the same letter. Mom if I remember right was going to go with a G for my name and the dad said Jeno’s Pizza started with a J. I still hear my uncle call dad Jeno (G No). So not really sure how it came about but I usually tell people the grandma story it sounds a little better. My nicknames have included tinny because I was smaller than Jill when we arrived and Bean by a few of my college and coworkers friends. I have ALWAYS had my name mispronounced and told Matt I would NEVER EVER name our child something that could be mispronounced.

Joshua Dean McKenzie

We had Joshua’s names picked out for awhile before he was born. We didn’t tell anyone because we really wanted to make sure he was a Josh when we had him. We had other names picked out but they did not have as much variety as Joshua. I probably pushed for his name to be a simple name that has been around forever and that no one could misspell or mispronounce. At first I told Matt I wanted to call him what we named him, but then he told me he really liked that he had the option to shorten his name so we started to look at names we could do that with. I did want a name that if we did shorten it that it was still a real name. I told Matt growing up with a name no one can pronounce makes you really think about how you name your baby. I joke that when you have a set of parents with simple easy names that can’t ever be said wrong you usually get some interesting names. We had a fun time naming Joshua, Josh or JD and we really hope he likes his name.