Naming Jaleesa

A lot of people always ask me why we chose the name Jaleesa.  I'm not going to lie we struggled a little with naming her, for a few reasons.  But, ultimately Jalyn named Jaleesa and that was that.

Jalyn was easy to name.  Her name was selected when I was still in high school.  I always new I wanted to incorporate Lyn in my daughter's name some how.  Funny enough I never had a doubt that I wouldn't have a girl.  I just seemed to always know.  It was a name that John and I had also talked about for a few years when ever the conversation of babies came up.  On a drive from California to Arizona one of the many weekends we visited my family out there after we found out that we were pregnant with Jalyn, we were discussing names.  Jalyn's name was never a question we just knew that is what is was going to be.  The middle name was a little more of a struggle and selecting a boys name was really hard.  And to this day her name is her.  It fits her in every aspect and I could never see her being anything but a Jalyn.

This time around we struggled.  We needed a 'J' name and the we went through a few.  We new the middle name was going to be Lottie.  Jalyn's middle name is Ann after my mom and Priscilla.  We knew from day one that if we had another girl her middle name would be Lottie after John's mom.  I really wanted to name her Josephine but John hated that name.  For a while we were going to name Jacqueline but I have some personal issues with the name Jack and I really hated the name Jackie and was fearful people would call her that.  Then we moved on the Janel.  It just didn't seem to fit either.  One day John came home and said what about Jaleesa.  I said I think I like that where did you here that.  He started laughing and said on the show A Different World. 

A couple days later we were going back and forth with different names.  I don't know what made us think to ask Jalyn but we did.  We asked her if she wanted to help name the baby in mommy's tummy.  She said sure like it was a normal thing to name babies.  We started giving her a few options.  How about Janel? No. How about Josephine? No. How about Jacklyn? No. How about Jaleesa? Yes.  We kept naming a few different names and she would say no.  Then we would ask her about Jaleesa and she would say yes every time.  For the next couple of weeks we would do the same thing and she would always say no her name is Jaleesa.  So that was that.  We couldn't have selected another name after that if we tried.  People started asking what we were going to name the baby and Jalyn started responding, Jaleesa.  There was no turning back after that. 

And now I know that Jaleesa's name just fits her.  I couldn't see her as anything other than Jaleesa Lottie.  Just as I could never see Jalyn as anything but Jalyn Ann. 

Have a beautiful day! Smiles, Jessica