Sawyer's a girl

I'm so far past the point in my life where I sit around thinking of baby names for my own future children. Occasionally, a pregnant friend will humor me for a moment as I make a few suggestions for their babies ... Harper, for instance, is a name I would definitely consider for a girl (although I think it made Top 100 this year, of course). Or Maeve. Boy names are always tougher. It's just a more traditional line of thinking — heck, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John still make the annual list. I like James ... as in Jesse James. No nickname. Tough and western. (Jesse, sadly, was stolen forever by girls back in the 80s.)

So, there are four Sawyers in Granby. A town of 1,200 people. One is in high school. One is the same age as my Sawyer. The fourth we call 'Little Sawyer.' He's a few years younger. But, lately, I've had several people tell me they considered Sawyer as a name for their little girl. Funny they should mention that. I just went onto the website of my favorite baby name book ... it has this cool dynamic name chart ... and it turns out that Sawyer skyrocketed last year as a girl's name.

Arden's heyday was as a boy's name back in the Victorian Era ... probably when people actually read Shakespeare. Happily, we have yet to meet another little one here. I do have a friend from Leadville named Arden — awesome woman. While it was just a coincidence that we chose that name, I'm proud to have her be the namesake. Funny enough, she married a guy named Reed.