My kids and their baffling names

Some people are understandably baffled by my kids’ names, so I thought I would explain.

Ethan (Iggy) was my eldest son, who died in April 2019 aged 15. Iggy had two younger sisters: Isabel (Izzy) and Jessica (Jess) plus a step-sibling 2 months younger than him (Maddie).

When my ex-husband Martin and I decided to have a baby, our favourite name was Izzy (a character from Hollyoaks). We had a feeling the baby was a girl, so we called her Izzy right from the beginning.

The 20 week scan revealed Izzy had a willy, so we swiftly changed his working title to the nearest boy’s name we could think of: Iggy, after Iggy Pop.

Iggy sprang into the world 5 weeks early, and stealthily (the midwives had sent Martin home as they said nothing was happening), earning him the official name Ethan, after Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible.

Most people continued to call him Iggy.

We still wanted our Izzy, and five years later (with two traumatic miscarriages in between) we finally had our Izzy

Update 2024: Just to confuse matters further, Jess (the baby I had with Si my current and final husband) is now known as ‘Jay’, and Izzy is now known as ‘Zee’ but they prefer not to be collectively referred to as ‘JayZee’.