Would A Rose By Any Other Name...

After Catherine was born I wrote this post about how she got her name. Jordan and I chose somewhat unusual names for our daughters and a lot of people ask where we got them. (The names, not the daughters. We're pretty sure we know where those came from). I've wanted to write a post about it for a while, but never managed to get around to it.

1) Evangeline Arwen: Back in 2006 (or maybe 2007) Jordan and I started watching the TV show Lost. We bought the first two seasons on DVD and watched both seasons in about a week in his brother's old bedroom at his parents house. Ahh, the good old days. Anyway, we saw the name Evangeline Lilly pop up in the credits (no one had heard of her at that point) and we decided then and there that if we ever had a daughter we would name her Evangeline. When we found out I was pregnant with her our girl name was Evangeline Fae, but as the months went on I decided I no longer wanted to use Fae. And so the search to find a middle name began. Belle, Bella, Elise, Paige, Claire... all names we discussed but didn't sound right. I was reading Lord of the Rings (for about the third time) and brought up Arwen. We were afraid it would be too weird. When she was born a little more than three weeks early we still hadn't named her. After my c-section Jordan brought her into recovery and goes, "People are asking me what her name is." I responded, "I like Arwen." And she's been our Evie Arwen ever since.

Evangeline means Bringer of Good News
Arwen in literary terms means Noble Maiden, the Welsh meaning is "fair, fine"

2) Catherine Eisley: I did write a post on her name before, so I'll give another version. We had a horrible time naming Catherine. We had used our favorite name already, and we couldn't agree on anything. We talked about Ariana, Ariadne, Calliope, Arabella... nope nope nope. We joked that we were going to name her Katherine and call her Kitty since Evie called her "kitty" during the ultrasound. We weren't serious. But the more we said Katherine the more we liked it. We decided on a whim one day to go with the spelling "Catherine" because we felt it was a little more classic.

Her middle name was also difficult. Jordan wanted to use Elise or Estelle. We love the name Elise, and Estelle would be for his grandmother. But I thought Catherine Elise sounded too plain next to Evangeline Arwen, and Catherine Estelle sounded a little stodgy to me. Her due date approached and we still hadn't decided on her middle name (and honestly we weren't positive about the first name, either!) While watching Star Wars about two weeks before her birth we heard "Mos Eisley". Eisley. And we knew that was her name. It always bothered me that Eisley had no meaning. I'm big into name meanings. I finally did some digging online and found out that Eisley comes from the Swiss surname Eisele and it has a wonderful meaning!

Catherine means Pure
Eisley means Cheerful

3) Emiliana Vesper: When we found out we were expecting another daughter my initial thought was "THREE GIRLS??!!" followed immediately by "What the heck are we going to name her?" We talked about the name Jane, something simple and classic. I liked Emily, too. The middle name Hermione to go with our other "geeky" middle names. But the day we found out she was a girl Jordan mentioned Emiliana. It was a name he had seen while playing a video game (Assassin's Creed Brotherhood if you must know. Emiliana Santi was a female assassin). We weren't sure about it. It was a little more "out there" than our other names. But I loved that it was the Italian version of Emily, and we could call her any range of nicknames if we wanted. So it stuck.

I thought I would lose my mind coming up with a middle name. Hermione was just too much with Emiliana. Jordan's grandmother passed away in March and we wanted to honor her somehow. I still didn't like the name Estelle. But her middle name was Eleanor, and she went by her maiden name Davenport (Davvy). Emiliana Estelle. Emiliana Davenport. Emiliana Eleanor. Emiliana Davvy. For a while we had decided on Emiliana Jane Estelle. Finally I made a list of names I liked and we narrowed it down. Estelle, Vesper, Josephine, Charlise, Elise. We went between Josephine and Vesper for a while until the Tuesday before she was born. Vesper has the same meaning as Estelle. And Vesper is the love interest of James Bond. We could honor Mimi and stick to a geeky theme all at the same time! So Vesper it is!

Emiliana means "rival; emulating" or "friendly; soft" depending on its Latin or Greek roots
Vesper means "evening" or "star" or both, depending on the source.

We had a lot of fun (and a lot of arguments) naming our babies. Now I couldn't imagine them being anything else. Evie is definitely not an Aubrey (a name I randomly insisted on about halfway through my pregnancy), Catherine is no Calliope. And the name Jane just doesn't suit our Miss Emiliana. I hope they grow to love their names as much as we do!