What's in a Name?

Joel and I studied the meanings before selecting our daughters' names.  When we were in the hospital cradling our sleeping and swaddled six-pound, one-ounce firstborn, we couldn't have projected that Reese (which means ardent, passionate, and fiery) would so aptly fit the child she would grow to become.

For your Jane Austen buffs, she's much more Elizabeth than Jane, much more Marianne than Elinor.  She's a child who cried -- hard -- when her favorite pizza shop recently went out of business, choking out between sobs, "I will never find another pizza that I like as much as that pizza, maybe not for the rest of my life!"

Three days later, she asked Joel to drive back to the shop just to make sure that it was still closed.  It was.  She cried again.

To put it mildly, the girl feels things acutely.

While driving by ourselves last weekend, Joel and I discussed her name.

"We could have chosen a name that meant relaxed or peaceful," I noted.

"Or mute," he added.

Alas, we didn't.  A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but we both suspect that our Reese would, were she not Reese called, retain that same temperament which she owes without the title.

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1 comment

  1. I totally get being more of a Marianne than an Elinor, and Reese just seems to fit the child who cried over the pizza place :)
    We picked out our daughter's name, Isabel, way way way before we knew how she would come to us. It is a family name; my grandmother's. But this great-grandchild could not look more different than her great-grandmother, yet she is plain and simple, an Isabel.
    Lovely post.

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