Anna Rae Kemp

We decided on the name Anna Rae at least a year ago, and picking that name was easy.  I never looked through a bunch of baby name books, or tried to figure out what the most popular name of the year was, because we knew from very early on that we wanted to incorporate family names in our baby's name.

So Anna Rae is family names with a twist... Anne is Johnathan's mom's middle name.  Anne is also my best friend's name, and I am so excited to say that we are also naming our daughter after her.  We have been through good and bad experiences, sicknesses, college, weddings, and I could go on and on.  She will always hold a special place in our hearts.  Ray was Johnathan's dad's middle name, and since he used to always talk about Johnathan and I having a girl we thought it was appropriate to also name her after him.  So we turned Anne into Anna because I thought it flowed nicely with Rae, and changed the spelling of Ray to the most generic girl's spelling of the name. 

Now what will we call her?  I wanted to pick a name that people wouldn't be able to shorten because I know how hard Johnathan worked his whole life to get people to call him Johnathan instead of John, and even now some people call him John, which by the way he hates.  I'm probably going to call her Anna Rae, among other little nick names.  Johnathan (jokingly I hope) wants to call her Rae Rae.  I also don't mind if people just call her Anna.