How did you choose your Children's Names?

 When my son was born, on my 19th birthday, we had decided to name him (if it was a him) Timothy Alfred. Thomas was Thomas Alfred and that would be a way of naming him after his daddy, the same initials. So, that’s what we did. Timothy was from the Bible. I had always loved Paul’s stories about Timothy accompanying him on missionary journeys.

Sixteen months later, our second child was a girl. We chose a name for a childhood friend, Tanya and made the middle name Lynette using the nette part of my name Janette. I had told Mother when I played with Tanya Vaughn in Amory when I was 10 and 11 years old that when I had a little girl, I would name her Tanya. That is how we came up with her name.It also kept the T & J of her daddy’s name.

Seven years later, our third baby was another little girl. We had decided that should she be a girl, we would name her after my maternal grandmother, Tera Sanderson. We named our baby Tera LaDale. I had read in the paper when my classmate Sonny Housel married that his bride was Tenza LaDale and I thought that was a beautiful name but I did not want to give up the Tera part. We wanted to keep our two girls’ initials TLJ.

So, strange or simple, that is how we chose our children’s names. For the grandchildren’s knowledge, I will tell my paternal grandmother’s reaction when I told her our baby’s name. She said, “Well, you could have named her after me”. I said, “Ma, I wasn’t sure I could handle Vanner”. She replied, “Well, there is nothing wrong with Mary Jane Savannah”. I said “I didn’t know Mary Jane was part of your name”. It grieved me for a long time that I had offended Ma because I loved her dearly. However, my cousin’s daughter named her daughter Savannah and that made me happy. Ma deserved to be honored.