The Name

For years my husband and I talked about what we would name our children.  We tossed around so many: Steven Roger, Anthony Stark, Edward Brock.....

As you can tell, we were serious about having a boy and making sure the name was something special.

Even last October we were talking boy names, and I had wanted twins so I could name them Samuel and Dean with them sharing the same middle name: Winchester.

Okay, yes.  We have some issues.

Once that call came that we were definitely expecting a boy in early January, the lists began.

Now, we weren't making pages and pages of lists.  I think we played with it on 2 or 3 different nights for about 6 weeks.  There were some interesting names, plenty of unique names, and then ones that made us laugh as I caught on to what he was doing.  My favorite was when he handed me his choices and in the middle I saw William Ryker and had to stop to realize where I'd heard it before.

But when I saw the name we ended up with, I didn't recognize it from anywhere, I just loved the way it sounded.  And that's when I learned he had snuck it in as a half joke and told me the story.....

My husband has always played games.  It was console games forever, playing through Resident Evil and Pokemon and Kirby, not to mention everything Super Mario related.

His best friend convinced him to try a computer based game with him.  This started a love that hasn't ended, and it was because of Star Craft and Diablo that he wound up playing the Warcraft games, and eventually online with World of Warcraft.  We met there, over 6 years ago now, in that virtual world.  Our characters grew together there, and even after moving in together and then marriage and a move across the country we still played that together.

But he explained that it was that first game that started it for him.  The story from Starcraft sucked him in, and the characters made him love the story and keep playing.  If not for that first game, then we may never have met and fallen in love.

And so, that's how our son was named after a character in my husband's first computer based game.  And I have to thank Blizzard for creating a name that I fell in love with before even realizing just how much it really meant to the two of us: James Raynor.