Tuesday, April 05, 2011

what's in a name?

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people keep asking me if we've decided on a name for our baby girl yet, or if we're telling people what it is. its funny that even though we've had her name picked out for over 8 years, and even though i didn't hesitate in sharing the boys' names long before they were born, for some reason i don't want to start telling every single soul what we're naming our daughter. i have a feeling it's because over the past 8 years since we first agreed upon it, the name ava has bounded up the "most popular baby name list" from #47 all the way up to number 5 and has remained thereabouts for the past few years.

josh and i were officially dating for only a month or two before we began talking about marriage. my time in england was coming to an end and we both knew that if we parted without a great deal of commitment, our relationship could very well fizzle out. he was 26 and i was 23 at the time and neither of us wanted what we had to fizzle out. i'll never forget sitting next to him in a cozy loveseat, chatting while we were supposed to be studying, and having my breath taken away by him asking me, "would you be willing to move to san diego?" this guy hadn't even told me that he loved me yet and he was already asking me if i was willing to move out of state....no, make that out of country for him! though i was somewhat surprised at his boldness, i surprised myself even more by answering, "yes" without hesitation. (i suppose the idea of sun drenched beaches and palm trees swaying in the breeze probably had something to do with my quick response, but only a little!)

it wasn't long before we had professed our love to one another and were making plans for future visits, meeting each other's families, and talking about spending the rest of our lives together. while playing a game of ping pong in our school's sports hall, we somehow began talking about names for our future children. i remember that he very decisively told me that he wanted to name our first son tristan. which one of us brought up the name ava, i can't quite recall, but i do remember falling in love with that name right then and there. ava sounded graceful and elegant, beautiful and intelligent all at once. we thought that the names ava and britain went well together, fusing a name we both loved with the country that we fell in love with one another in.

since then we've bounced different girl names off of each other and pondered them, most often disagreeing (josh prefers musician inspired names such as dylan and presley, while i tend to swoon over emily and cassandra), but we've always come back to our original girl's name pick: ava britain. today the girl behind the counter who was cutting my keys asked me what i was having and then what name we've picked out. i told her and, sure enough she said, "oh i know so many little baby ava's right now!" which is exactly the kind of response that makes me want to keep her name a secret until she is born. but as i walked out of the store, i was able to shrug my shoulders and just tell myself "so what?" so what if she'll be the 3rd ava in her class at school and always be known as "ava s."? she may be one of many ava's out in the world, but she will be our one and only ava, a girl who is so precious to us that we picked her name out while still in the giddy stages of falling in love.

17 comments:

Miranda said...

I love that name! Its beautiful!

Kristal Sawyer said...

Perfect!!!

Angela said...

Cute! I love that name, even if it is popular!

Joshie's Sweetie said...

It's perfect:)

lil said...

Lovely name, esp the second name with meaning for both of you, Britain!!! Great!!

Alvin & Denise Engler said...

I'm sure that Ava will be strongly rooted in your love, and that this will quickly settle any laments she might have about having a more "popular" name. How precious to have the daily reminder of how you loved her, thought of her, and named her so early on while you were only still just talking of marriage (and way before the name was popular anyhow). It gives me chills the way God had her set on your heart and steadily carried out his plan for your family. What a beautiful story and an absolutely perfect name.
-de

Sarah D said...

Love the name! So sweet!
Coming from personal experience as one of many Sarah's born in the 80's, I have to say I have NEVER minded. I have friends named Sarah, I even went to school with a girl with the same first & last name. I was always ME Sarah & when I hear of another person with the same name I oddly don't even relate it to my name if that makes any sense...I love my name & I'm sure YOUR Eva will too :) Especially with such a special story behind it!

Lori said...

I LOVE Ava. Also, you probably know that I have all kinds of crazy rules for naming children (there's an entire blog post about it). One of them is that the name has to be something that people have heard but not overly popular. Not a name, say, in the top ten. So what did we do, we went and named our second child Matthew. It just seemed that the meaning, "Gift of God", outweighed the fact that everyone and his best friend has the same name. So, yeah, he'll be Matthew B. forever. Oh well. He's our Matthew B. Just like she's your Ava S. Sometimes rules are meant to be broken. (Not that it was ever your rule...)

M.R. Tumnus said...

Ava is a lovely name - and lots of other people think so too! She will be your one and only Ava, a special gift. I am looking forward to meeting her face to face. XO

Unknown said...

What a sweet post and an awesome look into the love between you and Josh. Good for you for standing you ground and doing what you want. I agree with Sarah, the name Amy was so popular in the 80s, I had at least one in every class through school and I never once minded that I had the same name as someone else.

Cherie said...

Ever since you told us when Tristan was barely a bump in your tummy that if the baby was a girl she would be Ava Britain Ive always loved that name! I knew I would never be able to steal it from you, even if you never had a baby girl! Love you and I miss you sis:<

Julie said...

Such a cute name! If its popular it means a lot of people like it. Also LOVE the middle name and the meaning behind it.

kelly ens said...

beautiful name, beautiful story! :)

Z-Mama said...

Love it!!!

Jessica LaTour said...

I cannot wait to meet her! She's going to be such a little love and beautiful just like her mama.

Kathy said...

Pretty name. I'm so glad you get to use it. I grew up in the company of many Kathy's. The best was when there were two Kathy W.s in the same class. We Kathy's really got a charge out of that.

Did you make the darling letter blocks?

heidi said...

@kathy: i WISH i was creative enough to make those letter blocks! no, i found them on an etsy site, which i drool over often...thinking i'll just have to add them to my gift registry :)