We had been sitting at the Four Seasons beachfront restaurant in Kona on the final night of our honeymoon, enjoying a great meal and brainstorming for baby boy names. We had discussed baby names throughout the honeymoon, especially while driving around Kauai, and we continued brainstorming over dinner. We were coming up with all sorts of names like Landon, Carson, etc. Finally we settled on a theme: we wanted names that had a definition that we liked. One of the Hawaiian words that had piqued our interest was “mauka” — meaning “towards the mountain”. It’s an adjective that was sprinkled throughout the driving directions in our “Kauai Revealed” guidebook. (You know that little blue book that every malahini uses in Kauai?) Anyway, we thought this idea of choosing a name that had something to do with “mountain” was perfect for us.

Many thanks to Blackberry and Google, we were able to find a list of mountain-related names. As it turns out, “Hamilton” is an Old English name meaning “beautiful mountain” — we thought that was awesome. Plus it has “Milton” in it. And it’s not a popular first name at all (because of its popularity as a sirname). According to our research, the last time Hamilton appeared in the top 1000 names was back in the 1930’s. All good news to our ears. We want a name that is unique, memorable, and carries some bearing. Other mountain-related names included Bergen, Alpine, and a bunch of others.

Our waiter, Drew, was keeping tabs on our brainstorming progress and when he heard the name choices, he was a big fan of Hamilton. So much so that he went ahead on his own and had the dessert chef write “Congratulations Hamilton” in chocolate script on our souffle plate! We loved it and Hamilton is still our top contender for baby name at the moment.