What’s in a name?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.” — Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

What’s in a name? We like to believe a great deal can be gathered from our name. For centuries people have written histories and tracked origins of names.  Some do it for fun, some for genealogical reasons, and others for history.  So when it came to picking out a name for our little miracle, Dear Husband (DH) and I took this very seriously.  We thought about our past, present, and future and what we hoped to pass along to our child.

However, due to our desire to wait and find out the sex of our little one we had to come up with not just one, but two names.  A boy and a girl. Our decision to “do it the old fashioned way” has been met with some push back.  Most people say things like, “Oh you’re stronger than me I just couldn’t make it without knowing” or “How can you plan a nursery?” Which our nursery, by the way, has been done in grey and white tones with Gingham because we are in the South :).

So, for those that truly know me this is will be no surprise, but we started a name list.  I keep a list for everything; groceries, work (yes, even housework), projects, weekly meals, etc. We had a few that were “good”, but not quite “good enough” as DH would say.  The boy name was easy it only took us two tries, but the girl name was a little bit more difficult.  We started with names we liked, and eventually narrowed it down to 2 or 3 that we could agree to disagree on.

Then one day out of the blue it hit me.  Why not put our grandmother’s names together?  I had always loved my great grandma’s name, and she was what one would call “feisty” (which I admired about her). So I thought let’s see what the meaning behind her name is.  I will have to admit that as soon as I read it tears came to my eyes, and it was not just the pregnancy hormones.  After finding the meaning DH and I knew there was not a more perfect name if we had a girl.

So without prolonging the suspense any further I give you our chosen names:

BOY

William Henry — William (DH’s first name) and Henry (we both just liked jit). The English meaning of William is Resolute protector and Henry means Rules the Home 🙂

GIRL

Mamie Jane — Mamie (my great grandmother’s name) is a Hebrew version of Mary meaning Wished-for child and Jane (DH’s grandmother’s name) in Hebrew means Gift from God.  (Like I said river of tears at this point.)

 

So for anyone that has been following our journey to this point I think you can tell from our names that we are beyond grateful for this blessing.  Our Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE or IVF doctor as some would say) gave us 26 to 28 weeks as being the point I could carry a pregnancy too.  Well as of Thursday we are officially 39 weeks! So each day that this sweet little miracle stays put is a blessing from God.  We are so ready to meet our miracle, but we are OK if they decide to stay put just a little longer.