What’s in a name?

We kept our baby name choices a secret throughout my entire pregnancy, even though we were pretty much 100% settled on them from the very beginning. We never even opened a baby name book, as we had a boy’s name and a girl’s name already in mind from conversations we had before I even got pregnant.

The secrecy drove a lot of people crazy and sometimes we got questions as to why we were doing it that way. The thing is, we just REALLY wanted the surprise–with both the baby’s sex AND the name reveal. It was also nice that we never got any unwanted “feedback” about our choices since we didn’t share them to begin with. (Although, now that it’s been revealed, we’ve been overwhelmed by the positive reactions we’ve received!)

Now that Nora is here, we’ve gotten a lot of questions about her name. Why we chose it, what it means, and most of all… what was the boy name choice?

And, well, I can’t help with that last question. :) We had so much fun keeping the names secret from everyone that we’ve decided that we’ll likely do the same thing next time, too. And that means we won’t be revealing our boy name choice, just in case we want to use it for a potential future baby boy. Sorry, people.

But for Nora…

We don’t really know where Nora came from. We’re not sure where we heard it, or when we first discussed it. It’s just a name that we discovered at some point and decided that we both really liked it. We knew that when it came time to name our kids, we didn’t want anything super popular, but we also didn’t want anything completely unique or obscure. We like nice, “normal” names.

Depending on your source, Nora means “honor” or “light.”

Our choice of Grace for a middle name has a bit more of a story behind it. When I got pregnant, we were already decided on the first names, but we weren’t sure what we were going to do for the middle names. One thing we did know was that we wanted to use family names. We discussed several different options over the first several months of pregnancy.

I really wanted to honor my great-grandmother, who died in 2002 at the age of 96. She was greatly loved and respected and we all cherished her as a member of our family. There was so much to love about her, as she had the best personality. It’s actually really fitting that I’m telling you all about her today, as September 20 was her birthday.

My great-grandmother’s name was Madeline.

As much as I love the name Madeline, it didn’t seem to fit quite right (Nora Madeline), plus it seemed a bit long for a middle name–especially when put with our last name. One day, I was thinking about my great-grandma and remembered the stories about her nickname–Gracie.

My great-grandfather (whom I never met, as he died before I was born) always called his wife Gracie. Back in the 1950s, there was a show called “Burns and Allen” that starred George Burns and Gracie Allen. Apparently, my great-grandparents loved this show. On it, Gracie Allen played a really ditzy character–and to tease her for her own (sometimes) ditzy nature, my great-grandfather dubbed my great-grandmother “Gracie.” And it stuck.

And so I came up with the possibility of using Grace as the middle name for Nora. I asked Michael if he liked Nora Grace, and as it turned out, he loved it.

Next thing we knew, our little Nora Grace was born. And although it may not be as obvious a connection as using her real name, our daughter’s middle name was chosen in recognition of the matriarch of my family, one whom we miss very much.

Happy Birthday, Grandma. I hope you are looking down at Nora with a smile. I know you are part of the group of angels who sent her to us, and for that, I thank you so, so much. I love you.