Naming Madison Mae Zufelt

Madison Mae Zufelt was a really hard name for us to come up with. We talked for months with no real conclusions. We always went round and round in circles about lots of names, usually coming right back to Kaitlyn. I also really liked Emma and Eliza. Should have learned my lesson by naming Ben, but Eliza was already taken by our good friends the Arveseths here in Virginia, so I figured we could just use it on our next baby girl to give more separation between the two girls. Guess what, the Arveseths are moving in two weeks and we're broken hearted over loosing them.

Back to Madison's name. My mom had been teasing us about the name we were to pick for the baby. She kept saying it had to be Dallas or Austin or another Texas city or something else Texas since at the time we were still planning to return there within a year and it would be like betraying Texas to have a baby that wasn't a Texan. All our other kids would tease this one for not being Texan, so the best we could do was have a Texan name or something like that. By June we had decided to become permanent in Virginia in our hopes of getting an overseas, European assignment with ExxonMobil. That meant we bought a townhome in Virginia and had to drive the truck to Texas to pick up the rest of our household goods, like a formal dining room table, piano, yard tools, etc.

We had a long, 3 day, 30 hour drive to talk and laugh about names. We were 6 months along in the pregnancy and knew it was a girl, so Dallas and Austin were out. Near the end of our drive while we were in the Great State of Texas, we were getting pretty close to Houston, somewhere between Dallas and Houston when we started talking baby names again. We were laughing about all the ridiculous city names we could choose to name the baby. Silly city names like Mildred, Waco, Jewett, Leona, Waxahachie or Ennis Zufelt. Then we passed Madisonville. We both sort of stopped laughing. We sort of liked Madison and it stuck. So we had Madison but were stumped for a middle name. I believe all girls should have middle names. None of this lazy stuff that when they get married they will be able to have their maiden name become the middle name. I love southern girl names like Mary Jane and Peggy Sue. And I love it when people use both names, it's just extra cute. My Grandmother Manning is named Ellen Mae, not Ellen, it's Ellen Mae. We loved how it fit with Madison Mae and I fully intended to always call her Maddie Mae. It fit almost all my requirements for naming a girl. Long name, nickname and cute southern twist too! Perfect. Turns out I do say Maddie more than Maddie Mae like I had planned, but we still do both pretty regular and I do love how it sounds.

One day I was over at my friend Marti's house when Maddie Mae was just starting to walk. Maddie was Marti's biggest fan. She would leave me and Brian at church to go to Marti in a heartbeat. I think she preferred Marti for a while in fact. One day at Marti's house, Marti called out to Maddie and said "Maddie Mae come here." She stopped and looked at me. "Why do we call her Maddie Mae anyway?" I started laughing, "Because that's her actual name." Too funny. Marti makes up nicknames for everyone and I guess she couldn't remember why she/we had picked to call her Maddie Mae. One of the other good little friends Maggie is nicknamed Maggie Moo, so I guess Moo was already taken and we had to take Mae.