Association Of Catholic Bloggers

I was named after a tugboat. Seriously. I was born in the late 1950s and many girls I went to high school with shared that tugboat’s name: Cheryl Ann. Apparently in the mid 1950s there was a popular show called “Waterfront” which starred Preston Foster as the captain of the L.A. Harbor tugboat. To this day, whenever I run across a woman who appears to be around my age and whose name is Cheryl, I can almost be certain that her middle name is Ann. In fact, I spoke at a recent conference and while signing books was asked by a woman if my own middle name was Ann. Her nametag identified her as a “Cheryl” and we immediately connected. A chuckle erupted between us and our heads nodded in agreement. Yep, we were each Cheryl Ann. How we choose to name our children is important. In her new book “The Catholic Baby Name Book,” Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur takes that importance very seriously.  With more than 10,000 names, Fagnant-MacArthur covers a lot of ground. Flipping through the pages I f...