The Name Game

Stryder Jayton Crouch - that is the name that we chose for our precious baby boy. We gave the impression that we were pretty undecided about baby names all the way up until his birth. This was mostly true. We were never quite sold on any girls' names. Of course we had a few we liked, but nothing that grabbed us. Interestingly enough, we had pretty much decided before we even got married that if we had a boy, his first name would be Stryder. We have been asked many times where this name came from. The truth is, when Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring came out to theaters in December of 2001, I went to see it with my family. It was then that I fell in love with the name Strider. You see, not far into the movie we are introduced to a mysterious, masculine, heroic warrior with this name. He is later called Aragorn, which is how most people know him. I thought it was a great name for a man, and decided that, if my future husband approved, I would name my baby boy Stryder (with a "y", not an "i".) I am not, by any means, a LOTR fanatic, I just loved the name and the character that it represented.

When I met Mark in 2006, it didn't take long before we knew we were meant to be together, and would eventually get married and have kids. I told him about my love for this name, and he loved it too! (I also made him watch the movie so he would know who the character was that it came from.) So, the first name was decided pretty easily, but kept secret because we didn't want any one else to use it before we had kids. :) A middle name did not come so easy. We actually didn't decide on Jayton until 2 days before Stryder was born. I used to love the name Jayden, but then it became so popular that I just put it out of my mind. So, we talked about Jonathan, Jaxon, Payton, etc., but we couldn't agree on any. I then saw Jaxton in a baby name book, and we liked it, but again we weren't quite sold on it. We wondered about swapping the x out for a y. Amazingly, we both liked it and Mark said if we had the baby that day, he would be happy with that name.

There you have it - the name "Stryder Jayton" was decided on July 25th. I sure hope he likes it! ;)