You may be wondering something. I understand why. How did I, a woman so keenly aware of the weight of the burden of choice, who revels in the responsibility and gives names with gusto but never haste, decide on a name for my daughter? Especially with a husband who claimed equal say (not entirely unreasonably) in the matter?
Well, actually it was pretty easy. We do subscribe to the “see the baby before you decide on a name” thought; since babies all look pretty similar to us, it just doesn’t seem like getting a look at a wrinkly red face would provide too much insight (we may be wrong). So, long before we were engaged we got married we became pregnant we found out the gender, we had her name selected.
As far as middle names go, I really wanted our first to be named after his or her dad, and “Whitney” happens to be my beloved’s middle name. I fell in love with “Aurora” in high school, and my zeal never waned. No, she’s not named after the northern lights, though we’d rather attribute it to the aurora borealis than to Sleeping Beauty (who names their kid after a Disney princess anyway?). We consider it a bit unusual without being bizarre, and it allows for the adorable nickname “Rory,” which we use quite a bit (“Aurora” is very feminine where as “Rory” is a little more cute and playful). Also, if Rory ends up having an “R” speech impairment, she can introduce herself as “Awowa” or “Wowy” which will be hilarious, as long as she outgrows it eventually. Finally, in Latin and all Latin-based languages, Aurora means “the dawn,” and it’s a fairly common name in Spanish (“Brittany” does not translate AT ALL so I wanted to allow for the fact that our baby girl may want to learn another language one day, and it would be nice if speakers of the language could pronounce her name).
Really that’s all there is to Rory’s name story: there was a name, we liked it, it has nicknames, and it translates to Spanish. And sure enough, she came out (neither wrinkled nor red) and wouldja know it- she looked just like an Aurora.
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| Aurora and her daddy, just born |
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| Rory at seven months |
Interesting you should say she looked like an Aurora. I completely agree. When we went to the hospital we thought we were having an Isaiah. He came out and I thought, "Hey, Matthew!" but quickly pulled myself into line as I had swore for years that I would not walk in the Jr trap. Silas wondered around in my mind that night a bit. The next morning, at the moment of decsion, we were back at old faithful, Matthias, which I had loved since...highschool or earlier. :)
ReplyDeleteI love it! Thanks for sharing, Marti!
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