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Why Wallace?

It starts with loving family history. I had a very small family growing up so history about my family always seemed very important. I also think that our society today doesn’t honor family history or even honor family enough, so it has been important to me to incorporate family names when naming my children, to root them to their family history. We have little enough cultural and family identity today, that I feel that any way to remind us of who we came from is valuable.

Chanler’s name goes back at least 9 (he is the 10th) generations on my father’s side. Andreas is Jessaleigh’s great grandfather’s name (if I could have found a name with as long a history on Scott’s side I would have liked to use that, but given the patronymic naming in Sweden and Norway it just didn’t work).

The name Wallace goes all the way back to (past) William Wallace in Scotland (you may remember the movie Braveheart…) Wallace was also my Grandmother’s maiden name and is my middle name. I have tried (with uneven success) to honor the families of Scott and my parents by choosing names from them that held special meaning and were beautiful in their own right.

Wallace is special to me because it reminds me of my Grandmother, whom I miss dearly. Being from a small family, the people you do have become more important and special. My grandparents were nearly the only family I had, other than my mother, when I was a child and so it feels very important to me to honor and remember them and to tell my children about them too.

Why Wallace for my daughter?

I see (hear) Wallace as a beautiful and delicate name. It was my grandmother’s and mine and it feels right to me for it to be passed to a girl. That is all that I can say. I feel like it would have made my grandmother very happy to have a great granddaughter named with her name.

Because our family was so small, much of my ideals for what a woman should be came from my Grandmother, and since Wallace was her maiden name, I associate Wallace very strongly with her femininity. For me it is a beautiful, dignified, elegant, and feminine name.

Why Wallace for a first name?

I love unique and unusual names and have always wanted to insure that my children weren’t one of 5 kids with the same name in any group or class. Using Wallace as a first name also means more opportunity to talk about where it came from and why it is meaningful. While middle names are a wonderful way to bring in important family history, it isn’t until children are much older that then can understand that they have multiple names and why.