How Torsten got his name

The deal was that if Erik let me have another baby, he got to choose the name.  When I told him that before I became pregnant, we both knew I wasn't being entirely truthful.  He did a great job suggesting some names and we both really liked the new name for our little baby Torsten.

All of our boys have skiing-related names.  Skogen is named after Skogen Sprang, a famous freeskier who was very well-known around the turn of the century, and was actually just named the head coach of the U.S. freeskiing team in preparation for the 2014 Sochi Olympics (the immediate past coach and multiple X-Games medalist, Evan Raps, is coincidentally returning to medical school at the University of Nevada).  Interestingly enough, Skogen Scharrer shares the same birthday with Skogen Sprang!  Skogen's middle name, Roux, is from the movie Chocolat, which is one of the first movies we watched together.  Johnny Depp's character in the movie is Roux, a rough and tumble journeyer, and while we were watching it, Erik said, "Let's use Roux for one of our kids' names," I think primarily because of the way it was spelled.  It also works well because Erik's middle name is Andrew, which is in his family tree, so it's sort of a spin-off of that.

Klaasen is a derivation of a name we got from Kara's family tree.  Klaus Kinkel has held multiple high-ranking government offices in Germany, including Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor (similar to the Vice President of the USA).  Klaasen's middle name is not only my Grandma's maiden name, but it is also the name of a ski resort in Vermont called Burke Mountain.

Following with tradition, we thought we should use something ski-related to name our third little boy.  We got the name Torsten while watching the ESPN Winter X-Games this year.  Torstein Horgmo is a Norwegian snowboarder, but we changed it to Torsten and it also happens to go well with "Maida, Skogen, Klaasen..." better.  However, boy names ending in -en seem to be the new pink over the past few years.

Torsten's middle name was the hardest to come up with.  We seemed to have so many ideas, but nothing seemed to fit perfectly.  We had people we'd love to honor, but didn't know who or how or what.  Finally we decided on S.  Just S.  It is simply the letter, with no period as it is not an abbreviation.  S was my grandpa's middle name and when we asked my mom why Grandpa Dick's (her dad's) middle name was S, she said no one ever knew.  She vaguely remembered something about Harry S Truman.  I did some research on Harry S Truman and discovered that the past President's middle name was also just the letter S with no period.  This S did not stand for anything (which was common practice among the Scots-Irish), but it was to honor both of his grandfathers (Shipp and Solomon).  We thought this was kind of neat because we really wanted to honor Erik's grandpa, Shorty, too.  So, the S in Torsten's middle name is to honor my Grandpa Dick and Erik's grandpa, Shorty (a.k.a. "Deda").

For completeness' sake, I'll give the story behind Maida's name, too, though she was not named after a skier.  We thought it would be neat to have a K somewhere in all our kids' names since we both have K's in our names.  She was going to be Kensington if it was a girl (Kensi for short) and Skogen if it was a boy.  Well, I remember it like yesterday:  one morning I woke up, about 3 weeks before my May 1st due date, and I walked out into the living room and emphatically told Erik, "We have to think of a new name if it's a girl!  I hate the name, Kensington!"  We had both forgotten the K thing by this time since we had names picked out several months before this, and we went back to the list of names and actually ended up making a new list, from where we got Maida.  Her middle name is Raine to honor my mom, Luraine, which also happens to be my middle name.  It wasn't until she was 2 days old that we remembered the K thing.  Ha!

So there you have it.  Erik Andrew, Kara Luraine, Barkley!, Maida Raine, Skogen Roux, Klaasen Burke, Summit, and Torsten S.  Erik says he's also getting another dog, but I don't know if I could handle that!