"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!