“If Any Letter Defines Modern American Name Style, K Is It” – this is the headline of a blog post I just read about baby naming trends and how K is becoming extremely popular as the first letter of choice in baby names. Nancy writes a brief summary of a New York Times article by David Brooks on naming conventions. I found this interesting because we have a K phenomenon going on in our family. It seems Mr. Brooks is stating that our choices are shaped by the social networks around us. I haven’t read the full Brooks article yet, but I thought this would make a good blog post about our names.

We have a hard “K” sound going on in our family and when Kalonji and I married and first started considering names for any children we’d have together, the names we chose all fit the pattern, including the name we ended up using “Kaleya” Between first and/or middle names, combined with the hard K sound in the last name McClellan, all the kids names fit. Kamau, Miles-Khalil, Jihad Khrmon, Qacheyta and Kaleya. Then there’s me with my hyphenated last name of Koonce-McClellan. Kalonji’s mom’s nickname starts with a K. Kalonji’s brother’s name starts with a K, and even his kids have either first or middle names that start with K. Kalonji’s father’s first name ends with K. I love it!