Kaleah's Name

Kevin picked Maylee's name because he worked with someone with the same name in Arizona and always liked her name.  He wasn't sure how she spelled it, but told me "there was a g and an h in it."  I am guessing it was Mayleigh, but as a primary teacher I told him we are not spelling it with silent letters.  

For our second daughter, we had a list of three girl names we liked and were in the process of trying to pick just one.  One night, Kevin had gone to bed while I stayed up searching baby names.  I decided to check out Hawaiian girl names because after we had already named Maylee, we learned her name is Hawaiian (spelled differently though). I thought that maybe there is another Hawaiian name we would like.  I liked Malia ("Mah-lee-uh") and Talia and suggested them to Kevin earlier, but he said "No."  So as I'm reading down the list of Hawaiian names, I find Kalia.  I wrote it on a piece of paper along with the other three girl names and put it in the iPad case.  The next morning, Kevin was flying to Boise for a p.e. conference and I knew he would get take the iPad.

Later that day, he sent me a text saying he liked Kalia the most.  I was shocked and assumed he would say no to that name.  So the next job was trying to figure out if we should spell it the Hawaiian way or a different way so people are more likely to say it correctly.  At the hospital we had both ways written on the board until we made our decision.  We thought people might say "Kuh-lie-uh" or "Kal-ee-uh" if we went with the Kalia spelling.  Thus, we spelled the Leah part the more common way.

Her middle name is Alise.  Kevin suggested Annalise (which I thought was too many syllables paired with Kaleah) and my great-grandmother's name was Alice so we decided on Alise.