What's in a name? JAF

I have a coworker who is really into genealogy and recently we were talking about how the old german families had reasons for why they named their children certain names.  Such as the first born son was named after a certain family member, etc.  It got me to thinking about how these days people choose names for so many different reasons, not because it's always been done a certain way and this child has to be named after his maternal great, great grandfather.  


When I was younger I had some names picked out for when I had children.  Mostly names that I just "liked".  Nothing really special about them.  Well, I take that back, there was a boy name that I had picked out that was the name of my grandfather's brother that died at a young age.  And the name from a Titanic movie character.  Then there was a middle name I had thought of using that belonged to a child I loved very much from a past relationship (I was kind of like her stepmom).


When I became pregnant the first time we had discussed many different options.  I wanted to somehow connect my children to my stepson.  At first we had talked about using his middle name "Austin", but he didn't like the idea of us using his name.  So then I had thought of doing a rhyming name.  He is Joey, so Chloe or Zoey would have been cute girl names.  But, no other boy names really rhymed with Joey.  So we had to come up with a plan for if the baby was a boy.  So that is when I thought of using the same initials.  So then we had to narrow down all the choices for boy names that start with "J".  I also wanted it to be four letters like Joey (even though his name is really "Joseph", he goes by "Joey" and has always been "Joey" to me.)  So we finally decided on "Jake Alexander".  Next time we got pregnant we found out that we were having a girl.  We had a really hard time agreeing on a name for her.  Lee was on board with the JAF initials, but we weren't agreeing on the name.  Since we already had "Jo--" and "Ja--", I wanted to use either "Je--", "Ji--" or "Ju--".  Lee really liked "Jena" (pronounced Jenna), but I was afraid people wouldn't say it right.  I also wanted my baby girl to have a special, unusual name.  I liked the name Jewel, and one day came across the spelling "Julz" online and really liked it.  Lee had to really be talked into it, though he loves it now.  So Lee got to pick the middle name....so many great "A" names for girls.  So we ended up with "Julz Alaina".  If we ever have anymore kids....which I seriously doubt....if it was a girl, Lee would get his "Jena" and if it was a boy I'd pick "Jett".