Conor and his namesake

When Mike and I found out we were having a boy, it didn't take us long to choose a name.  For a first name, we simply brainstormed a list of names that we liked.  (Of course, Mike had to catalogue those names in an Excel spreadsheet.)  "Conor" does not have any real meaning or significance to us personally.  It's simply a name that both of us like and were able to easily and quickly agree upon.  We wanted a name that was unique -- not a name that would cause him to forever be known by his first name and last initial because of all the other boys in his class with the same name.  Thus, though we really liked the name Aiden, given that it's been the most popular boy's name for the past few years, we decided against it.  We liked Conor just as much, and it's not nearly as popular, so we decided to go with that.  We also decided to go with the traditional Irish spelling (with only one "n") rather than the Americanized version to give a little extra flair of uniqueness.  

As for the middle name, we always knew that we wanted our children's middle names to be named after family members.  Before we even became pregnant, we also knew what our first boy's middle name would be.  We knew we wanted to name him after my grandfather, Ray Bancroft.  Grampy (now known as Papa to Conor) is one of the strongest, hardest working, most loyal, and most caring and loving people we both know.  We knew without a doubt that we would want our son to follow in his footsteps.  Therefore, we always knew that we would give our first son the middle name Raymond.  Papa and Conor have already become quick friends.  As you can see in the photo below, they are both very much in awe of one another!