The story behind Brigham's name!

I've gotten asked several times in the last few weeks "So what's the story behind the name?", so I figured this was the perfect opportunity for a blog :) 

Let me start off by saying, NO!  We are not Mormon..  For those of you that are wondering where that came from, Brigham Young University is a Mormon college.. and someone did ask me this question the other morning when I was dropping Boston off at school! Pretty sure if we were Mormon, Boston wouldn't be attending a Christian School! 

Anyway, several months ago, before we even knew the sex of the baby,  I googled 'cities that start with B' and Brigham was one of my favorites. We weren't necessarily set on picking a name that started with B, it just so happened that so many of our favorites started with a B!  Believe it or not, Brigham was NOT the original name we had chosen!  When I painted the nursery back in December I painted the name we had chosen on the wall so that I could take a picture for the baby book.  

Up until a few days before I was induced, baby Gerdes was going to be named Britton Jigs!  Derek never really loved the name as he thought it was a bit girly, but the final say on the baby name was my call and Britton was by far better than some of the other crazy names Derek liked!  Bear (after Bear Grylls), and Braun, are just a few of them.  So since Derek wasn't sold on Britton I had been pondering other names.  The NCAA tournament had started and Brigham Young University was mentioned several times on the TV which got me really thinking about the name Brigham again.  I went to bed one night thinking about it..dreamt about naming the baby Brigham..and woke up the next morning and told Derek I thought we should change the name! Brigham was definetely a different name, which is what we were going for, and as soon as the baby was born I knew right away it was the perfect name for him! 

Derek's #1 name choice was Beckett, but there are already a few Beckett's that I know of and I wanted a name that I didn't know of anyone else having.  For girl names I had always loved the name Bristol.  Even when I was pregnant with Boston, I wanted Bristol to be the name if we were having a girl.  Then came Dancing With The Stars...and Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol plastered all over the news...and that totally ruined the name for me!  Just in case there is ever a Baby Gerdes #3, I won't be sharing our other name choices :)  We had said a few of our names to Boston, and mentioned Britton several times in the weeks before I was due.  Up until just this week, Boston actually called his little brother Britton!

The middle name Jigs was Derek's dad's nickname, so a very special name for our little one.  Ironically enough... my mom and her siblings had a goat named Jigs as a child, so there is a connection on both sides of the family :)  

So that's how we came up with the baby's name!