I love chatting about names — pet names, baby names, nicknames. But, it’s a process that I keep under wraps when I am going through it, which is frustrating at times because JD is not into the deep dives and naming discussions like I am. So while I’ve been itching to chat all about names, the process, how to get there, I know it’s for the best to wait until after baby has arrived and it’s been settled.

I learned my lesson a while back while sharing thoughts on names before we got Finn. Everyone has an opinion. And when you have a good one, someone else may use it before you can. I knew Finn would be Finn after we met him for the first time. There were other names we considered that just didn’t match his personality. I had shared some of those with family and friends and my goodness the hate some of them got. Though, I do think he would have made a good Horatio — named after Lou Costello’s character Horatio Prim in The Time of Their Lives, my very favorite Abbott and Costello movie.

With Eleanor’s name, JD and I had agreed on it back in 2009. We both liked that it is an old name with loose family ties and plenty of nickname options to choose from. I thought we’d call her Ella, Nora, or Nell, but she became Goldie. This is reminiscent of my grandparent’s generation to me. My grandmother and all her brothers went by names that did not stem from their givens. Fun fact — Goldie is an actual nickname for another name we had considered for her. It was between the two, but she was clearly Eleanor.

My naming conventions are specific. I like old, traditional names that can be used in more serious settings with multiple nickname options. If it was popular in the late 1800s/early 1900s I’m on board, especially with all of the vintage nicknames! Bonus points if Jane Austen used it.

With Isabel, we worked backwards. One evening we were driving back to the city and I brought up the topic. We had decided on our boy name when I was pregnant so that was settled. We still needed to figure out girl names. We had been joking that our last name is “white” and if we used the Italian version of Elizabeth our daughter would be Betty White when translated back into English. I love the name Elizabeth. It is a family name and checks all of the boxes on my name wishlist. I especially love the nicknames Birdie and Betty. JD loved Birdie too. It was settled, we’d like to call the baby Birdie if she was a girl. JD couldn’t get on board with Elizabeth so I started looking into what other names used Birdie as a nickname, knowing full well that we could just use it anyway as we did with Eleanor, as my grandparents did too. Enter Isabel — Elizabeth translated. Immediately it felt right. We could use Birdie, it would loosely be another family name.

As with Eleanor our list was short. We circled around a few that kept popping up and the one everyone assumed I would use the first time around because if we’re cool with unrelated nicknames why not? But I knew if we were having a girl that her name would be Isabel. That excitement I felt the day that it clicked was unmatched. I wrote about how excited I was in my pregnancy diary. I was so convinced she was going to be a boy that I felt a twinge of sadness that we weren’t going to be able to use it now. I felt that way about our boy name when we landed on it too.

Once she was born, I knew her name the moment I saw her. JD felt it too. Our sweet Isabel. And now ten weeks in she is being called “Baby Belle” more than anything thanks to Eleanor and I have no idea how I am supposed to spell it, haha. Like the cheese, add an “le” at the end, one l? It’s catching on so we need to figure that one out.