It’s time to unveil the details of the great naming dilemma of ’08. I did inform you, dear readers, a couple times that we were struggling greatly with choosing a name for B. Baby number three. We would compile lists, look at them, not feel strongly about any of the names, then chuck them all and start over. For about three months, I think S. spent most of her waking hours either reading baby name books or cruising the Internets for baby name sites. I figured a name would come to us, so just said yay or nay to new suggestions she tossed out.
By September, though, the pressure was beginning to get to us. I still figured we would find something, but there was that fear that the kid might decide to show up early and we wouldn’t have a name for her yet. With M., we went to the hospital without a name, but we had it down to two and were leaning strongly towards M.. Her early arrival just prevented us from nailing it down. We picked C. about two weeks before she was born, and had a strong list of four or five names we had been comfortable with for at least a month before that.
We did some major revamping in September and our final five were, in no particular order:
Erin
Meredith
Reece
Amilia
Alise
Others would pop in and out but those were the constants. Reece was our second choice for C., so we were kind of against it, but since we couldn’t seem to pick one, it kept hanging around.
We weren’t in love with Erin* but it’s a good Irish name which would keep with our Celtic theme.
*Apologies to my good friend Erin in Denver.
We both loved Meredith, but A) we have friends in KC who have a Meredith and B) M. is already MMB, and we knew the middle name for this one would be Margaret and didn’t want two MMBs in the family. Meredith Margaret sure sounds Irish Catholic! Oh, and while S. watches Grey’s Anatomy, I’m not a fan, which was another half strike against it.
I was leaning strongly towards Alise for much of the month. Two problems with it, though. A) One of my best friends has an Elise. B) We were concerned people would call her Alice. Yuck.**
** No offense to any Alices out there.
Which brings us to Amilia. We both liked it, but wondered if it was on the verge of becoming popular (a big reason we didn’t go with Reece last time). Again, we have friends in KC who have an Emilia, although they call her Mia. Which made us think of taking it in another direction. Couldn’t we call our Amilia L.?
We thought about it, went back-and-forth, and debated whether just to name her L., or Amilia and then call her L.. At some point in this process, my mother-in-law called and suggested L. as a name. That seemed like a sign of some kind, so L. officially went on the list.
So now we’re about two weeks out and S. was spending hours at her computer looking at Amilia, L., Alise, and Meredith in different fonts, waiting for one to jump out at her. I don’t know when the exact moment was, but at some point that weekend, we both agreed the baby would be L..
That spelling flies in the face of our Celtic theme, but neither of us are big fans of Leah or Lea.*** So we went with the Italian/Spanish spelling instead. Baby number three has to be special somehow.
*** No offense to any of them, either.
We did worry about people being able to pronounce the name correctly. Spelling errors we can deal with; we get stuff for Megan and Kate all the time. But we don’t want to give the kid a name that no one can pronounce. After much thought, we decided people would be able to figure out L.. So naturally the reminder call from our pediatrician for her first weight check went something like this:
“This is Dr. B’s office calling to remind you that Lie-uh…Lie-uh…umm, Lee-uh has a weight check at…”
Good grief.
Anyway, we really like L. and are very pleased with our choice.