The Burkett Bundle

I've listed several of the twin questions that we get asked, but there is one other question that we get a lot, that I've never addressed on this blog.

Where did you get your babies' names?

Kyran and Karyssa are not common names, and that is not an accident. Growing up with the name Talyse Krolewicz, I learned very quickly the benefits and drawbacks of a unique name. I could never find my name on anything personalized. Teachers stopped during roll call because they had no clue how to pronounce either of my names. My name was always misspelled and mispronounced. But even given all of this, I loved having a name that no one else had. No one ever had to ask "Talyse who?".

So, Jason (having a very common name, and being referred to by a nickname through high school and college) and I decided that we wanted less common names for our children.

Many years ago, I heard the name of a young actor, the brother of a very famous actor and loved the name. You might remember Kieran Culkin from movies like Father of the Bride or She's All That (he played the little brother in both). I knew for quite some time that I wanted to give my son that name, so when I found out I was having twins, I immediately went to work finding a name that would go well with it.

We knew that we didn't want rhyming names, but we did want them to start with the same letter. I never came up with a boy's name that I was crazy about, but since I'd always loved the name Alyssa, I decided to try to work with that. Kalyssa didn't have much appeal to me, but when I replaced the L with an R, it not only made the beautiful name Karyssa, but also sounded great with Kieran.

Somewhere along the way, I decided it would be neat to spell both of their names with a Y, so Kieran became Kyran. For those of you wondering, it is pronounced with the long E sound, and rhymes with "hearin'."

Jason and I had decided not to talk about names until after the 24th week, because we knew the risks associated with twins, but when I told him those names, he immediately liked them. Of course they were open for discussion, but with the weeks that followed, we never really had a chance to talk about any other names, so Kyran and Karyssa it was.

Their middle names are more family-oriented. Kyran's middle name is Jason, which follows the tradition of both of our fathers. Jason's middle name is Thomas, his father's first name, and my older brother's middle name is Raymond, my father's first name. Maybe one day (many years from now) we will have a grandson with the middle name Kyran.

Karyssa's middle name is Josilyn, which follows the pattern from which I got my name. When my parents were dating, my dad wrote a poem for my mom. To name it, he took the first two letters from each of her names: TAmy LYnn SEal, named the poem Talyse and they decided if they got married, that's what they'd name their first daughter.

We decided to do something similar with Karyssa, so we took the JO from Joyce, Jason's mom's first name, and also his grandmother's first name and sister's middle name, SIL from Silvia, my great-grandmother who turns 94 next month, and LYN from Lynn, my mother and my paternal grandmother's middle names. So, Josilyn is a combination of several of the strong women in Karyssa's life. We truly hope that she shares many of their characteristics.

And that is how Kyran Jason and Karyssa Josilyn were named. No, they aren't common names, and yes, people will probably mispronounce Kyran's name throughout his life, but I think they are wonderful names for even more wonderful children!