About his name

We've been getting some questions about where the name Omri came from, so I figured I'd put an official statement out here, not that I expect many people to read this.

First off, it is not a family name.  And although the name does show up in the Bible, we don't know much about that figure and, to be honest, don't really care much.

A more relevant cultural reference point is the book The Indian in the Cupboard.  R enjoyed reading it when she was young and the main character's name stuck with her.  In that way it's a nice parallel to the name I had picked out for our daughter since I was young (which, yes, I first read in Archie comics).  I wouldn't say either of our kids are named after these characters.  Rather, we just liked the names and that's where we saw them first.

The other name we were strongly considering was Warren.  With that one, he could have avoided having both an usual first name and last name.

We went into the birth with the names Omri and Warren in our heads and thought we would wait until after we met the kid to decide.  I don't know if R had a similar experience during the birth (she was a bit preoccupied), but I kept thinking of him as Omri throughout the process.  I was cheering him on as Omri.  I had to stop myself from saying it out loud because I knew it wasn't official yet.

We gave Veronica the choice between Omri and Warren, and she picked Omri immediately.  Although she also liked the name Window Door, so we didn't put too much stock into this :-).

At one point we thought of using Oren, which is a combination of Omri and Warren, but it felt like a compromise kind of like Vera felt like a compromise.  It had to be Veronica and it had to be Omri.

Omri is not trendy, which is a big plus for me.  We liked the names Mason and Caleb too, but they were removed as possibilities because they are so popular these days.  Omri sounds modern to me and a little mysterious.  His mom has an unusual name too.  I'm glad they have that in common.

I don't think it's a tough name to spell or pronounce, although I'm sure people will get it wrong at times.  His middle name, Robert, is my dad's name.  If he really dislikes his first name, he can decide to go by Rob or something.  But I hope he realizes we put a lot of thought into his name and something about it just felt right.