What's in a name

Theodore Kemble Bush. The name has generated quite a number of comments and questions so I thought a blog post was in order.

First name first. Theodore came from a couple of places. First, my Grandpa (mum's dad). I never really knew my grandpa but have enjoyed reading his war diaries recently. So grandpa was probably where we first got the idea of the name.

The only other Theodore that had come to our minds when thinking of a name for our son was Theo Huxtable, from the Cosby Show.

In thinking of naming our son Theodore, we also thought of the shorter options, such as Theo and Ted. We had briefly considered simply calling him Theo but we like Theodore.

We like calling him Little Ted and our Little Teddy Bear but I think he will be Theo in every day use.

From time to time he is Theodorable as well.

A link we hadn't known about was that Graham Henry, the All Blacks coach, is nicknamed Ted.

Hopefully our little Ted is blessed with a better smile.

A link we hadn't thought of is Theodore from Alvin and the Chipmunks - hopefully that one doesn't come back to hurt our Theo! Theodore the chipmunk is described on wikipedia as the following...


"Theodore is the chipmunk of innocence. He is shy, loving, sensitive, chubby, gullible, trusting, naive, irresistible, snack-munching, adorable and cute."

Theodore, definitely the cute chipmunk

We've had one or two comments linking Little Ted with Playschool. I joke that our next son will be called Edward so we can have Big Ted and Little Ted.

Little Ted, front left. 

One of the most common comments we received about the name though is how much people love it. I think it might be one of those names that people had kind of forgotten about but might be about to go through a bit of a renaissance, I'd like to think we started the trend!

The second name has caused more confusion than admiration but when people hear the story they like the significance. We were quite settled on the first name but had a few options on a middle name. Kemble wasn't at the top of the list but as we sat in the hospital last Sunday we both liked the idea of having a middle name of some significance to us, the other options we just liked but they didn't mean much to us.

Kemble on the other hand, while being quite an obscure name has great significance for us. About two years ago now we did a 2 day walk along the Thames path from Windsor to Henley, staying over night in Marlow. We enjoyed this walk so much we decided to walk the whole length of the River Thames Path, about 180 miles. We didn't intend to do it in one go but over a series of long weekends. As we did these walks we spent a lot of time talking about our future, including having kids. It was a good opportunity for us to put some good thinking and talking time in to when and where we wanted to have kids. We decided that it would make financial sense to start having kids in London, and also might give us and our kids the opportunity to get British passports which would allow us to live and travel throughout Europe without restriction for the rest of our lives.

In terms of when we wanted to have kids there are always lots of considerations. We knew that we were keen to have kids as soon as possible as we aren't getting any younger. We decided one of the things we wanted to achieve before having kids was to finish walking the Thames path, this was not the type of thing to be done while pregnant and even more difficult with kids. So the Thames path was a great and symbolic achievements of ours, and Kemble, the final village on the Thames marked the end of one journey but the beginning of one our greatest journeys. It is for this reason that Kemble has great significance for us and we think it makes a pretty nice middle name too.

Jackie sitting on the Millennium seat gifted by the Kemble WI near the end of the Thames path. 

Jackie celebrating reaching the end of the Thames path, the last time she would be allowed to chug champagne from the bottle for a while as we started out on our next adventure.

Looking back from the source of the Thames to where we had come from. There was a thick fog  which made navigation a little tricky. 

Below are some more random photos of Theo taken over the past few days...

There were a few public transport firsts this week including first tube, train and bus ride. Theo was pretty chilled out about the whole thing. Mum and Dad were a bit more stressed out by the advanced pram manoeuvring required for these expeditions

Theo loves his bath and fell asleep on his first  bath. 

Too cute not to include this one.

Today the boys went out for a walk while mum caught up on some sleep. Theo caught up on some sleep too.