Cora’s Name

Naming a baby is hard.  Really hard.  Finding a name you both like and a middle name you both like that sounds good with your last name and sounds good on the playground and also good in the boardroom is HARD.

For those of you who are thinking of names for your own kids, or will be thinking about this someday, I will teach you how to trick your spouse.  Because Mark did it to me.

What we did with Thalia, which is what I wanted to do this time, is to narrow it down to two or three good options that we both liked and pick her name in the hospital when we met her. So we did part of that.  We came up with two options that we both liked.  What went wrong this time is that Mark had his favorite, and I had mine, and they were not the same.

So what Mark decided to do was start calling her his favorite name, Cora, very early in the pregnancy.  Then he started calling her by a nickname – Little C.  He also started referring to Thalia as Little T.  And I got mad at first since I had not agreed on this name and I wanted to wait.  But he kept going and kept going and before I knew it, I was also calling her Little C.  And then I was calling her Cora.  So by the time she arrived, her name was already firmly planted in my mind.  Cora had already been her name for months and I couldn’t change it now!

The middle name was also tough.  We wanted one syllable so we narrowed it down to two options, one of which was Belle.  We liked the idea of a French name since she was born in Suisse Romande. This time we did not choose which one before going to the hospital. We ended up choosing Belle because of the midwife that was weighing and measuring and dressing Cora after she was born.  She kept talking to her and telling her what a ‘belle fille’ (beautiful girl) she is.

So that was that.  Cora Belle McCullough is here!