not sure if this is an old thread but i thought i would share...

i like family names or derivatives thereof... my mom's middle name and my middle name is jewel- so we named our first child julie and chose a middle name that flowed nicely with that and was the middle name of several good friends- julie ann is her name. then when we had a son next we named him after both dads- john allen- and the spelling of allen was also the spelling of my grandmother's maiden name!  when we had our third at first we were not going to follow the same initials of JA but after getting some input from someone who had all S named children and then with the fifth baby did not follow that- he told us about how she always felt like the unwanted, misfit child and it came out during a blow up as a teen. So off to find another name that followed the JA format. My grandfathers name was James and we had several important folks in our lives named James so we went with Jami as our next daughter's name. And found Alyse to be a good flow for a middle name.  So there you have it- family was an important influence- friends also entered into the decision and the pattern of the same initials ...Julie Ann, John Allen and Jami Alyse.

When we got pregnant we were sure it was going to be a girl. Well the ultrasound proved us wrong. The nursery plans and baby names we had picked went out the window. My husband and I are very non traditional but we wanted our new son to have a name with roots and meaning. On our way home from the ultrasound the name "Zeus" just popped into my head. My husband loved it immediately but even more so after I explained to him how I came up with it.  It turns out we come from a long line of Jesus' both our grandfathers, great grandfathers and even great great grandfathers were named Jesus. My husband's great great grandfather Jesus Arvizo is in history books as one of the first translators between the Navajo and Apache indians and was nicknamed "Soos" by the Navajo. We couldn't go with Jesus because it just didn't sound right with my husband's Scottish last name so we settled on Zeus. In addition my dad who passed away when I was little loved Johnny Cash who had a song called "A boy named Sue" its such a touching song and Zeus spelled backwords has the name Sue in it so I felt it added that much more significance to the name. I don't know much about my father's side of the family since he died when I was young. Recently I found out (from my aunt-dad's sister, that I hadn't seen in 25 years) that My great grandfather was Sicilian. I also found out that the southwest part of Sicily holds some remains of monuments to Zeus. The family was a little hesitant to accept us naming our son after a Greek god but eventually they warmed up to the name and realized how fitting it was for our long awaited buddle of joy(13 years to be exact). So Zeus it was, the god of gods and and the god of the sky and thunder. We had 3 baby showers thrown for us from friends and family in souther, central and northern California. At all 3 we had rain, lightening, thunder and even hale at one of them. The gods were definately watching:)