Riley's Name

I did a post here on the meaning of Jacob's name so I thought I would let you know a little bit about how Ryan and I came to decide on the name Riley Alexander.

Ryan and I tossed around a TON of name ideas that we loved. Many days we thought we were 100% decided then we would change our minds again. These were our other ideas here. (and if we ever have a girl the name is on that list too haha) For some reason our list of girls names was HUGE and had hardly any ideas for a boy.

Riley means 'courageous'. It is of Irish decent which is a part of my heritage (there's a lot) so there is that meaning there too.

Alexander means 'defender' or 'warrior'. My sister Rachael's middle name is Alexandra so I thought it would be nice using the male form of that name.

Ryan came to me very early on during my pregnancy saying he liked the name Riley for a girl but I had only ever heard it for a boy so I quickly dismissed the idea. He told me a student of his had the name Joslynn. She said she was named after her parents. Jos - the first part of her dads name - Joseph and Lynn was her mom's name.

Since I wanted a meaningful name like Jacob's rather than some name pulled out of a hat we thought if we had a girl we would spell it Rylie (ry the first part of RYan and lie after the end of my name ShanILIE) so as you can see, I came around to the idea :) But we ended up having a wonderful little boy and figured we might as well spell it the traditional way - Riley.