Elsa Camille

So we're having a precious little GIRL!

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My BFF Beth asked me to post about how we chose her name... and I thought that was funny (a blog post REQUEST!) so I decided to oblige even though the story isn't all that monumental.

For a (hypothetical) son... we wanted a strong-sounding name.  Unique but not overly weird.  The same was true about our criteria for a girl... we wanted "unique" but not "Did they make up that name out of thin air?!?"  I had heard the name Elsa a few years ago just once, and I liked that there weren't thirty little girls running around with the same name.  (I had never heard of any friend naming their baby that.)  I also liked that it sounded lovely and elegant.  I didn't want anything too "cute" because I wanted her to be able to transition nicely into an adult woman without having to change what she'd been going by all her life. (You know... deciding all of a sudden she wanted to be Kate, not Katie, or Elizabeth instead of Lizzy.)  Lastly, we  didn't want to be a family of all "C"s.  We're already Chris and Carissa Casey and we didn't want to pigeonhole ourselves into naming all our kids "C" names... so even though we though Camille was also lovely and elegant and unique, we used it as the middle name.  I remember suggesting Elsa to Chris one night in bed and I could tell he liked it.  He repeated it a few times (even trying it with an Italian accent... I've mentioned he's kind of a weirdo right.  He loves how my name sounds in Italian too!)  And I could tell he really liked the sound of it.  We struggled a bit over a middle name.  I had suggested maybe Kathleen, and he didn't like that.  For a few weeks, I had mulled over Camille in my mind but hadn't spoken it aloud to him yet.  And then one night in bed, HE suggested Camille as the middle name!  I was so surprised!  "I really like that one!  I've actually been thinking of it too."  And so it was decided.

Mind you... we chose Elsa before we were even pregnant.  (We LOVE talking about names.)  Camille came a little later, but we still didn't know whether we were having a girl at that point.

That was probably the most fun part about finding out.  Being at the appointment and being able to say, "Her name is Elsa.  Elsa Camille Casey."