What's in a name?

People ask me what my favorite part about being pregnant is. And while I try to mentally decide between morning sickness and not sleeping on my stomach, it hits me like a lightning bolt: the name. Picking out a name for a new person on Earth is one of the most fun, conversation inducing, opinion raising tasks. Shorten or not? Traditional or funky? Family or no family? I love it! So many options. My friends, family, neighbors, man walking his dog down the street or pretty much any random person can tell you that I am not really one for options, but this is the one exception.

SO! When we named Zeke, we decided that we are not ones for out there names that no one would get like "Exxon", but we did not want to name our kids "John" and "Mary". Our names (Jill and Mason :) ) are names that have actually been heard of, but they are not used in our generation very much. When we found out Zeke was a boy, we started the search. One night we were driving through Southlake and I was looking through the baby name book and there it was "Ezekiel". It means "Whom God makes strong"... loved it. I wanted Zeke to have every tool behind him to become a strong man in the Lord including an awesome name. My father's name was the choice for the middle because we wanted to use a family name for all of our kids. I think that names from family members is a way of honoring them for the impact on your life. And my father certainly has had that on me, so Ezekiel William it was.

Then, four years later we find out that we are expecting again. Yay... more naming! So, we found it was a girl and began the process again. There were several names that we considered. Two top contenders were "Suzan" and "Ruby". In the spirit of keeping with our family trend, we decided that "Suzan" was our top pick after my infamous Aunt Sue. (Talk about an influence in my life! That is another blog for another time.) Her name means "purity"; pure in heart is something I have been praying over our kids for a long time so it works perfectly. To be a little different than even that, we went ahead with "Suzanne". And not to keep Mason's family completely out of the naming mix, we decided to use his middle name as our daughter's: Robbins. (Monica's grandmother's maiden name) Suzanne Robbins. Perfect!

So, this blog was supposed to be short (sorry...), but I am having a dilemma. Zeke goes by the shortened version of his name as Suzanne will. How to spell it? That is the dilemma! Suzie? Suzy? Thoughts? We do have a majority on this, but I would love to know what you, Internet world, thinks. Hmmmmm......