6 Miles

…Or, “No, We Did Not Intend To Name Our Child After A Retired Football Player.”

So as we started telling people Marcus’ name, we had a few people ask why we named him after a football player. Um…whoops! (Marcus Allen played with the Raiders and the KC Chief’s, from 82-97…I hadn’t even thought about it, but maybe that’s why the name sounded “right” to us!)  (Ironically, we had talked about Austin Miles for awhile, but one of the reasons it lost out was because of Miles Austin–a football player on the Dallas Cowboys!)  So I thought I’d explain a bit behind the thought process of his name.

First, Allen is a family middle name. My grandfather, father and brother all have it and I wanted it to go on for another generation. We found out James’ mom’s brother also had that name, so I REALLY wanted to use it. That left us to find a name that went with Allen Miles.

There was lots of debate, and this time around it had to be met by approval by FOUR people.  In the end, Alex mentioned the name.  As we looked into the meaning, I found it interesting one of the meanings could be “Protector” (both William and Alexander mean that).  I also read it could have come from ”Mars, the Roman mythological god of war. Others, however, think it might be from mas (manly) or from the Greek malakoz (soft, tender).”  I liked the idea of him being a tender protector.  Then I read how Mark comes from ”Marcus, the personal name of St. Mark the Evangelist, author of the second Gospel. The name was borne also by a number of other early Christian saints”, and that sold the deal for me.  James liked it, the boys liked it, so we were set. (Austin lost out because I was wanting to keep each child’s name starting with a different letter and because I liked the trend of more tradational names. Plus, I grew up in Dallas–how could I name my child after Austin?!? )

I was thinking we’d call him Mark, and continue our tradition of strong names that we shorten to 4 letters that are easy for kids to write. James wanted to stick with Marcus. Right now it seems James is “winning”–he seems more like a Marcus then a Mark or Marc.   We’ll see!