Beau and John Smart live in Fresno, California with their six sons: Justin Ira, Griffin Michael, Bennett Aaron, Travis Dean, Wesley Miles, and John Aidan.
Over twenty years after the birth of their first child, Beau and John welcomed their sixth, and last, John Aidan. Aidan, as he’s called, is named after his father, but that was not at all what Beau and John expected.
Here, Beau shares how she and John named Aidan.
We were digging deep. We tried lots and lots of names. My husband is much more conventional than me. John suggested the name Kelly, which I was shocked about coming from him. It’s predominantly female! He must have had good childhood associations with that name or something. But we played with that for a while.
We weren’t planning on having another baby. Aidan was a COVID surprise! When I had my baby before him, Wesley Miles, I couldn’t decide if I liked Wesley or Miles better, so I just used both of them. If I hadn’t used both of them, his name would have been Miles.
When I had my 20-week ultrasound, we found out the baby had a cleft lip. They didn’t know how severe it would be, but it instantly changed the way I felt about naming the baby because I was much more protective of what he was going to go through in life. I didn’t want to go with Kelly — I thought it would be hard enough to be a boy named Kelly and have a scar on your face.
For a while, we had the name Thomas Gene. Thomas is my husband’s middle name, and my middle name is Jean, but I wasn’t crazy about this combination. It was our runner-up.
When I agreed to John, I never thought we would call him John. I said, “Well, we’ll put it on the birth certificate, but I don’t know what we’re going to call him.” I didn’t even plan on calling him Aidan. I just picked Aidan because I liked it and we had to pick a name!
I was really hesitant about Aidan because it’s so popular. John is historically so common and Aidan is very popular but now falling.
We flipflopped the entire pregnancy and days after he was born. He didn’t get named until the moment I was leaving the hospital. I was confident that his name was going to be John Aidan, but I didn’t know what we would call him day-to-day.
I thought of calling him Jas, because his initials are JAS. I thought of calling him Demi, because in Little Women, the baby boy is named John, after his father, but they call him Demi as a nickname. I had these little ideas of things we could try to call him, and then after we got home, we started calling him things and trying to figure out what felt good. Over time, I fell into calling him Aidan. It felt the most natural.
Everyone liked the idea of using our middle names. But I felt that if a man has six sons, one of them should be named after him. They’re all getting his last name, but it’s traditional. And John is his grandfather and great-grandfather’s name, so it honored them as well.
This time around, I felt like it was okay to go traditional. And I never would have picked that twenty years ago! I would have said, “Absolutely not! No child of mine will be named John. It’s just too ordinary!”
I wanted him to have a two-syllable name like all my other boys. And I wanted it to sound like it went with the sibset, style-wise.
When I was pregnant, we called the baby Rocket, just for fun. The boys still call him that sometimes. I knew we weren’t going to name the baby Rocket. Well, I might have done it.
Ariel was a compromise name that we agreed on 20 years ago. If it had been up to me and I had had a girl, I would have named her Una! I’ve loved it since I was a teenager in the ‘90s. Now that Luna is getting so popular, I think it might be too similar. But John said “no way” anyways, so I had to lose that one.
Aidan probably would have been Ariel if he was a girl. Or Cecily. That one showed up five or six years after I stared having babies and stuck around, too.
If I had known when I started that I was going to have six boys, I think I would have done the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers ABC order. I never imagined when I started that I would have six boys. I couldn’t conceive of that ever being an outcome — I have four sisters!
I liked Friedrich and Fritz. When I was a kid, I liked more girl names than boy names. Una’s been on the list for a long time, along with Gabriella and Rhiannon. I haven’t thought about them in so long because my husband wasn’t crazy about most of them!
I was teased a lot growing up with the name Beau. Bo Jackson was really big in the ‘80s — he was a football and baseball player, and the commercials were “Bo Knows.” I would get that all the time. And boa constrictor, Bo Didley, Beauregard — lots of people would say things about my name! But I never was hurt by it, I just kind of accepted it. I think my mom gave me a really good foundation on my name before I ever went to school.
Before the Disney variation, the princess from Beauty and the Beast was always called Beauty, not Belle. When I was little and we’d read Beauty and the Beast, my mom would say, “Oh look Beau, that’s like your name.” So I always had positive associations with it.
People do not know how to pronounce my name. I think if I lived in the South or something, people would know how to say it, but not in this part of the country. 80 percent of the time, people mispronounce my name. They rhyme it with Hugh.
I don’t typically care for boys’ names on girls. I like more feminine girl names! But I’ve never had that feeling about my own name — I don’t think of it as masculine. I love that it felt like my very own name.
My husband was just so supportive and wonderful. He’s been so great, and I felt like naming him John felt somehow much more special after spending 20 years with him than it would have been when we were first married and having kids.
Thank you so much, Beau!
See the entire How I Named My Baby Collection here, and for the chance to participate yourself, fill out our interest form.
Sophie Kihm has been writing for Nameberry since 2015. She has contributed stories on the top 2020s names, Gen Z names, and cottagecore baby names. Sophie is Nameberry’s resident Name Guru to the Stars, where she suggests names for celebrity babies. She also manages the Nameberry Instagram and Pinterest.
Sophie Kihm's articles on names have run on People, Today, The Huffington Post, and more. She has been quoted as a name expert by The Washington Post, People, The Huffington Post, and more. You can follow her personally on Instagram or Pinterest, or contact her at [email protected]. Sophie lives in Chicago.
View all of Sophie Kihm's articlesChevron - Right