What's in a name

We get asked a lot of questions regarding Enora's name, such as how we came up with it and what does it mean, so I thought I'd share a little about why we chose her name.

First off, the length of her name was important. Keith and I both have five letters in our first names, so we wanted her to have a five letter first name as well. Coincidentally, we also both have a six letter middle name (Thomas and Oriana) but we didn't follow that "rule" for her middle name.

Second, my dad's side of the family has a silent tradition of giving the girls names that end in "a," so we wanted to follow suit. At this point we basically searched the internet for names that fit both criteria. We made a list of all of the names we liked and slowly narrowed the list down to our favorite. Middle names went on the list too as we thought of them, and it really only took us a few days to decide on Enora Lucia.

Now for the meanings. Enora is Breton, which is an area in France that speaks Gaelic, and depending on what you're reading, it means "honor" or "shining light." We liked that Enora is Irish in a sense, as Keith is about half Irish and I am a bit Irish as well. We pronounce Enora as ih-nore-uh, or "Nora" with "ih" in front of it. It should be a short "e" sound, not a long "e."

Lucia is Italian, which is half of my heritage, and means light. My mom named me Lydia because she thought it meant light, and when paired with Oriana I would be her golden light. Well, Lydia is actually an old kingdom where coins are believed to have been invented and does not mean light, so I thought it would be nice to give our daughter the name of light, in a way naming her after me. We pronounce Lucia the Italian way, as in loo-chee-uh, but I understand most people won't get that so while I prefer the Italian pronunciation, I won't get mad if you say loo-see-uh (but I will correct you!). My Nonna informed us last week that her grandmother's name was Lucia, so we also accidentally named Enora after her great-great-great grandmother!

And, well, that's it! There you have the story of Enora's name.

Enora had her first photos shoot with my sorority sister Tracy (she did my maternity photos too) when she was almost a week old and I wanted to share some of those pictures with you. I'm using some in her birth announcements so once those get sent out I will share the rest. Enjoy!