We Have a Name!

What happens when you put two English majors together and they need to come up with a name for their first baby? Well, they are really picky! We started a list of names back before we even conceived, but by the time we found out we were having a girl, we hated most of the names on our list. It's a lot of pressure to figure out a good name for your child... what if they hate it?? What if it doesn't fit their personality? They are going to be stuck with it their whole life!

We came up with a name at Christmas that I hope she will like. It's the ONLY girl name that both of us really liked (like I said, we're picky!) and I had a list of TEN criteria that the name had to meet, so that narrowed down an awful lot of name possibilities and this is one of the few that met all of them. (That's what happens when you have a name like Loreal Mercile Ing... you get really opinionated about the kind of name you want for your kid!) We wanted to wait a while to make sure we wanted to stick with the name before announcing it to many people, because I personally didn't want to be swayed by anyone else's opinions. All that matters to us is that our daughter likes her name, and that we like it, since we're the ones who are going to be saying it over and over.

So, this is the name we've picked for our baby girl: Isabella Jane. If you want to hear the story behind it, this is it: Stephen really wanted to use Jane for a first name, but I couldn't agree with it because I wanted something with multiple syllables and with a musical, feminine sound to balance out the flat, short sound of Brooks. Stephen came up with the name Isabella, which I wasn't crazy about at first, but I loved the idea of using Bella for a nickname. Isabella grew on me before long, and it turned out being the only name that could meet the criteria of all the things that matter to me in a name for our child. I was not nearly so picky about a middle name, I just wanted something that would give her some versatility so that if she gets tired of having a flowery name like Isabella, she can use the short basic name Jane instead.

We put hours and hours into researching names and narrowing down names, including reading through an entire book about names. (It was not until we'd already become attached to the name Isabella that I was informed that it is also the name for one of the main characters in the Twilight series. Oh, well! Hopefully people won't assume we named her after that character, and Twilight seems like the kind of fad series that will probably die out over time anyways.) So, we still really like the name Isabella Jane after several months of thinking about it and we feel really good about it. I hope you like it too! We are excited that our little Isabella will be joining us soon!