Q & A #1

In an earlier post, I asked if anyone had any questions they wanted answered on this blog. Not too many responses, I must say, but I thought I would take a moment to post the answer to one of the more common questions we've received since James came along.

Question #1: "What are you going to call him?"
I am not sure if this is something people always ask new parents, or if our name selection has just inspired more inquiring minds, but we get this one a lot. 95% of the time we call him "James." If you know us, you can probably imagine that we regularly come up with other names for him (Buddy, Champ, Sweet Baby James, He-Man, He-Man-Woman-Hater (Mary got this one from The Little Rascals movie), Bubba, Snuggle-Muffin, Fussy McGillicutty, and others that are just too goofy to put here).

We selected the name James for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that we find it a strong, traditional name, one that we don't hear very often anymore. We were also happy to carry on a name with history in the Kerrigan family. My grandfather's grandfather was named James, as was his grandfather. Thus, our James has the name of his Great Great Great Grandfather and Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather. The first James that we know of was the father of William the Pilgrim, the first of our line of Kerrigan's to come to America. The next was a policeman in Newark, NJ.

James also has my first name as his middle name, as I have my dad's name as my middle name, and he has his dad's name as his middle name. Incidentally, my nephew Quinn also has his dad's name as his middle name - Quinn Timothy.

So, while he might one day become Jim, Jimmy, J.J., Jimbo, Jimmy Jeff, Doctor J, or some other variation of his true name, for now he is simply our son James.