the name.

Kale

Kale was the very first baby boy name that we came up and Kris and I both loved it immediately. I’m not sure where we first heard it, but I do remember googling “baby boy name Kale” to make sure that it was a name and not just a leafy green! It turns out that Kale is Hawaiian and means “free man,” which made us love the name x 1000. I was even happier to find out that in Hawaii Kale is the short for for Charles - the name of my mom’s brother who passed away from lung cancer years ago. The name was absolutely perfect for us. We definitely wanted something different, but not crazy. Strong, but unique. I only second guessed our decision once when I posted his name on a pregnancy web forum to get opinions on the spelling (Kale vs. Kael) and I got a million replies saying “you know it’s a vegetable, right?” I was a bit sensitive at that point and imagined Kale having to repeat the following conversation a million times:

stranger: “what’s your name?”

Kale: “Kale”

stranger: “like the vegetable?”

Kale: “yes, like the vegetable.”

It is somewhat similar to the conversation I’ve had 8 million times in my life:

stranger: “what’s your name?”

me: “Randalin”

stranger: “where is that name from??”

me: “my parents.”

Anyway, I got over it and now when people ask his name I tell them Kale and if they look at me funny I say, “like the vegetable!”

I think his name is AWESOME.

Michael


Kris’s dad’s name, Kris’s middle name and my dad’s middle name. Perfect.

Ellery-Krahl

Kris and I could not make up our minds about Kale’s last name. Would Ellery be a second middle name and Krahl his last name? Would he have two last names without the hyphen? Would we hyphenate?? There really was not right answer and in the last few weeks of my pregnancy and the first few weeks of his life it was a conversation we had many, many times. Neither of us are fans of the hyphen, but I wasn’t willing to give up my last name and once he was born, having Ellery as a middle name just didn’t cut it. Kale really is part Ellery and part Krahl and somehow losing one of those names gave the impression that he was a little one of one over the other.

Eventually I had no choice but to register him and we were forced to make a decision. Luckily, the government did it for us. His birth registration form informed us that if the parents could not agree on a last name, they would hyphenate it in alphabetical order - thus, Ellery-Krahl.

kale michael ellery-krahl.

pretty awesome.