Behind the Name

We are overwhelmed by the positive response to Kellan's name! Almost everyone has told us they think it's a great name. We really like it (obviously, since we chose it), but we weren't quite sure how people would react to it because it's pretty uncommon. Just thought I would put down a little about how we chose it.

Picking a name for this little guy was no easy task! For some reason, with the girls, I knew by the time I was four or five months pregnant what I wanted the name to be and lucky for me Andrew pretty much agreed on them. This boy, however, oof-da. Several of my top ten names were nixed by Andrew because of random associations he had with the names. Then, there were several of his that just didn't work for me. We looked at the top 1000 boys' names listed on the social security baby name site and pretty much nixed the top 20 right off the bat even though there were several we liked in there. We decided against a top 20 name just because we wanted it to be something unique (there are THREE Ellas in our neighborhood alone! Who knew that would be the FOURTH most popular name in the state of MN when she was born).

I also really liked Irish/Gaelic names for a boy so that helped narrow things down a bit. But we still couldn't agree. Can you believe that after looking through the top 1000 names NOTHING jumped out as THE name for either one of us?!

Then we started looking up top names in other countries just for ideas. We came across Lachlan, the number 3 name in Australia. And when I read the meaning of it, I REALLY liked it.

The boy's name Lachlan \l(a)-ch-

lan\ is pronounced LAHK-lin.
It is of Irish and Gaelic origin, and its meaning is "from the land of lakes".
May also possibly refer to a Viking ancestor or mean "bellicose".

I mean seriously, isn't that a perfect name meaning for a boy born in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and Viking Country?! We could call him Lach (Lock) for short. However, once we put it with Ella and Lily, it became quite the tongue-twister and we decided to try something else.

Nolan was our second choice, for no other reason than we both could agree on it and find nothing wrong with it. Then, I was reading my People.com headlines one day in November and there were several articles about some actor in the New Moon movie named Kellan Lutz. All of sudden, Kellan jumped out at me! Kellan Andrew Isaacson. Had a nice ring to it. It had the double "ll" from our names. It seemed perfect. We didn't pick it right then and there, and kept going back and forth with Nolan. But eventually, when we checked the name meaning and mulled it over for a bit, Kellan stuck.

Here's the meaning:
Descendant Of The Brightheaded One (Irish)
Powerful (Celtic)
Gaelic Meaning - Slender; fair.

Famous real-life people named Kellan:

Kellan Lutz-actor

Kellen Winslow: Tight End, Cleveland Browns

Kellen Clemens: Quarterback, New York Jets

Nicknames for Kellan:
Kell, Kale

I'm not sure if the "brightheaded" refers to "fair" or perhaps blond or if it means smart. But either way, I'm fine with that. ;-) And "powerful" is always good.

Here's another fun tidbit I found while looking up the name:

Based on our research, most people would imagine a person
with the name Kellan to be: Nice, smart and tough chap.
In one word, you might describe Kellan as a(n) "smart" person.

Not sure if we'll ever do a nickname for him...though, Kale is kind of cool. That's the lowdown on Kellan's name anyway. Just thought it would be fun to record our thought process here. :-)

We weren't for sure looking for a name with an "L" in it. But I have to say, with the third baby and everyone knowing by now we don't tell the name before the baby is born, it sure was fun to see what people guessed for the name. Many people realized our "L" naming convention with Holly, Ella and Lily. We weren't set on that for a boy, but did keep it in mind. People were coming up with all kinds of things. My dad and Clare and the girls took to calling the baby Isaac as they knew that would for sure be the one name we would NOT pick (Isaac Isaacson). And our friends down the street started calling the baby Wally because they couldn't think of anything else with two L's in it. And actually I sort of think that's cute as a nickname for him. :-) The name guessing prize goes to Sarah Gortenburg though who spent countless hours pondering names with L's in various places throughout the name. My favorite she came up with was "Lsarahl". ;-)

One more note, one major reason Kellan stuck with me is that it actually has elements of all four of our names in it. Obviously, it has Ella's whole name (which is why we picked the -an version of the name versus the -en version), then the L's for me and Lily and the "An" and an "e" from Andrew's name. The reason this struck me is actually thanks to Andrew's Grandpa Milt. Back when we first introduced Lily to Grandpa Milt, he made a comment that we should have one more so we could name the baby Leah because that had a letter from each of our names in it. For some reason that always stayed with me. And when I told Andrew, he liked that too, so if this baby had been a girl, her name likely would have been Leah Drew Isaacson. :-)