Her Name

While I am working on her birth story, I thought I'd throw you a little bone and write about her name and how we came up with it.

Genevieve "Evie" Marie

Remember our seemingly short list of criteria that said we wanted something not too trendy, not too weird, not too dated, has religious significance and a hint of family meaning.  This proved to be a tall order.

After working through a list of family names and trying to make them work (fail!), we decided to download an iPad baby naming app for inspiration and to help us think outside the box.  We would stay up and night and just read, letter by letter, the names.  Anything we both didn't hate was added to the list of potential names.  After about a week, we had a working list of 30 names.

After that we didn't talk baby names for a long time, but each spent time thinking through our personal favorites. With about six or so weeks to go, we stayed up really late one night talking through out list of 30 and narrowed them down to four.  We paired them each with a middle name: all of them religious in nature, all of them having something to do with a family member, none of them generationally trendy, and none of them too weird.

Knowing that two of the names were probably not going to make a big come back any time soon, meaning, we could save them for future children, we decided to hold on to those, leaving us with just two names.

One name I loved A LOT, but it didn't do anything for Eric.  Eric loved Genevieve and we realized that two other names we liked, Jenna and Evie, were nicknames for Genevieve.

To help solidify the choice, I was looking through some old mail containing a birth announcement for Eric's cousin's daughter and "DUH!"  They just named their baby with my first choice name...not that the two babies would spend a whole lot of time together, I just think it's weird to name the kids the same thing within two months of each other.  That was enough to tip the scale for me.

We started calling her Evie and Genevieve around the house and it started to grow on me. And I loved how Eric would light up calling her by name when talking to my belly.

Genevieve and Evie were not exactly names I grew up thinking I would name a child, so it was hard for me to get on board, but he loved them so much I was willing to compromise. With in a week they stuck and I knew our sweet baby girl would be named Genevieve.

How does Genevieve Marie measure up to our criteria?

Religious:
St. Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris, France.  Not real significance to either of us, but I think it's fun that Notre Dame is in Paris, and Eric went to the University of Notre Dame. Saint Genevieve was a leader and a fighter for her faith. I LOVE that!

Religious/Family
We are not French but gave our baby girl a French name. It worked out perfectly that my middle name and my mom's middle name is Marie, which is French for Mary, the Mother of God.  I so desperately wanted to work a form of Mary into all the girls names (which we did, even if they are in disguise!).  Done.  And now my first born baby girl shares a middle name with her momma and grandma, who are also both first born girls.

And a really dorky religious connection: Evie is a variation on Eve, which paired with Marie = the ultimate Marian typology (for you non theology majors here's a good article)

All first borns: My grandmother, Me, Evie, My Mother

Trendy/Popular


Genevieve is in the top 300 names, so people are familiar with it, but she won't go to school being one of three Genevieve's in her class.  Evie is in the top 800, but those are girls born with that name. It doesn't include nicknames.  Regardless, I think we're okay. :)

Everyone who has commented on her name has said something like, "It's familiar without being popular" or "It's unique but not weird"  And that's exactly what we were going for!

I must say that it's a heavy responsibility giving someone a name.  But after our hard work, I am in love!