Ty = Joy

It's a wonder Ty doesn't have some sort of identity crisis.  His name has changed three times.  Working backwards, his name is Ty Livingston Swain.  Livingston is my dad's middle name, his mom's (my favorite grandma) maiden name.  He became a Swain at the beginning of his eighth grade year when Terry legally adopted him.   He got to choose his own name at that time.

Before, he was Tyler J. Livingston, but everyone called him Ty.  I had legally changed both of our names when I came to Boise.  He wasn't even one yet.  There was a divorce in the works, and I didn't want to keep my married name, that name wouldn't be the family name that Ty would relate to, and I didn't want to use my maiden name.  I felt like it was going backwards and I wasn't that same person.  We started fresh with a family name that meant a lot to me - Livingston. 

The day he was born we chose Tyler.  His dad just had a middle initial that matched his father's name.  I suggested carrying on that tradition which would have made his initial B, but his dad (for reasons I now understand) didn't want to use his name, he suggested J instead.  I went along with it not because he would carry my initial, but because I wanted to name him Joy.  That's what I felt, that's what he was to me, pure joy, but Joy is not a name for a boy, so the initial, whose meaning I knew, worked.  Coincidentally, Joy is the middle name of the same dear grandma who's maiden name was Livingston.

I love his name now, all three of them.  I miss the J initial, but it doesn't flow.  Anyway, the joy is still there in him.  I feel it.