Fancy calling him that?!

We keep getting asked why the boys have the names they do, in particular we keep getting asked why Loki has a ridiculous nickname – so we thought we’d share where they came from!

Edward

When we were pregnant with Edward, we never realised naming him would be such a huge responsibility. We quickly learned that you can’t please everyone. So promptly stopped trying!

After we accidentally found out his gender folk kept demanding our list of names for their approval. None of them went down well so we quickly stopped sharing our thoughts!

We had bought a box set of Thomas the Tank Engine books for our nephew and before giving them to him we couldn’t help but notice how normal and proper all the male engine’s names were. We loved some of the old school names and after a closer look and dismissing more than a few of the outrageous ones, we added 5/6 names to our shortlist straight away.

Edward stuck. We loved Eddie as a shortened version and that was us sorted.

Mark claimed after the birth that Edward was actually named after a Football legend, I maintained it was after a big blue train and the hospital couldn’t be convinced I’d not named him after a sparkly vampire from Twilight.

Sigh…

Oren

Second time round we didn’t find out the gender and this drove folk bonkers. Bizarrely, we noticed though that we didn’t really get asked for our list of names to approve so that was a bonus!

When the big day came, actually while I was pushing, the midwife asked us if we had names ready and Mark excitedly reeled them off;

Heather Louise or Arthur Oren

As soon as he said Oren out loud I said no, and pleaded that Oren wasn’t a middle name. Mark quickly shot back; “Right, Heather or Oren” – our midwife remarked how lovely the name Oren was and out he came with the next push.

Oren seemed to go down pretty well. Not that we needed any approval but it was nice no one hated it.

A few of our Welsh friends pointed out Oren is Welsh for orange. It’s actually kind of bizarre as that was one of my cravings!

Oren wasn’t named after an orange but instead named after a tree. I had gone online to order Pine Tree seeds for Mark and according to google Oren means pine tree. It’s also old Scotch for Aaron, which happened to be a name we loved but couldn’t commit to. We loved that it was a tree and that it had a Scottish connection. Although we were both really fond of the name Arthur and pretty set on it up until the birth, we’ve no regrets on the last minute swap!

Lochryn Ross

Third time round it was an odd pregnancy due to it being after a couple of miscarriages. No one really acknowledged anything or got excited just in case it all went wrong. It was hard. It was really hard.

Edward and Oren were excited though and they were keen on finding out whether their new sibling was a boy or a girl, so we found out. The fact it was a third boy went down like a lead balloon, but that’s another story. Naming him also proved incredibly difficult!

Having been through this twice already and having vetoed literally every boy’s name there was, we got creative.,If I wasn’t allowed Jenson or Jasper then Hector and Zeus were definitely off the list as well.

We conceived on our holiday in Cornwall. Things got quite Poldark-y while we there and our baby name list on the fridge had the headings of Ross or Demelza.

The Demelza list was soon abandoned and we continued searching for a boys name we could both at least tolerate. I ended up stumbling across a Cornish baby name link and straight away we got 2 additions to our list. Perryn and Locryn. Locryn turned out to be named after a Cornish-Celtic King with a meaning linked to water (Loch) and that was us sold. The legitimate Scottish connection was perfect for us. We did tweak it a bit though and added a “h”; Lochryn.

We added the h to soften it and mainly to help with pronunciation. Everyone knows how to say Loch up here!

Lochryn Ross arrived rather promptly the day after his due date. After a brief discussion over a middle name, Ross was quickly agreed upon, it flowed nicely!

Now his nickname…

Loki

Shortly before we found out the bump was a boy our house became slightly obsessed with How to Train your Dragon. Based on a series of books it is now a kids tv show/film franchise that features a nod to Norse mythology, Vikings and dragons. It’s actually really rather good!

Edward and Oren love the Twins. Their characters are always getting up to mischief. One episode they pranked their village and had a Loki day. Think modern day April fools, the boys thought it was hilarious. They asked lots of questions about Loki and at this point the bump had been misbehaving slightly and the word mischievous had been used. Edward saw an opportunity and declared the bump; Loki bump after the God of Mischief and the nickname was established!

His nickname still to this day, 2 and a half years on, is Loki AND still to this day, folk really don’t seem to like it!

After Loki was born people’s reactions were hilarious. Some of them tried to hide their reaction, plenty didn’t. Some folk had a go at us; fancy calling him that? Do you want him to get bullied? Why can’t you just call him something normal? There’s still time to change it?

It wasn’t just Loki they didn’t like, no one seemed to be a fan of Lochryn either, it bothered Mark more than it did me and I feel slightly ashamed to admit we tentatively actually discussed changing it.

One of my friends said it was odd that we had a normal, proper name for our first, went a bit left field for our second and then flat out made one up for our third!

My absolute favourite was: Oh right you’re serious with that name? I thought your birth announcement was a joke?!

Sigh…

Obviously we love the names of our children and despite the fact we appear to have named them after a vampire, an orange and made one up we’re still very happy with them! They’re not trendy nor do they feature in the top 20 Baby name lists and they don’t often meet others with the same name as themselves but that’s just fine.

We’re well aware some of our friends and family are not exactly keen on our name choices but to be blunt; that’s their problem not ours!

If you’ve ever met my wee trio you’ll see they’re aptly named. Edward is the leader, strong and confident. Oren is gentle with a true affinity for nature. Lochryn… well Loki is a mischief maker, a rascal and a toe rag!

The less you care what people think of you, the happier you’ll be seems to be the take home message here!

Team Worrall xxx