Would a Lily by any other name smell just as sweet…?

What’s in a name? Well I’ve been meaning to write about Lily’s name and why we chose it so here I go.

I love my girls. I love that I have three girls. But having to pick a third girl name was tough! I really wanted to have a feminine name this time since Avery and Camryn are quite gender neutral. And it had to be more than one syllable, couldn’t start with A or C (or K for that matter), and of course both Merrick and I had to like it. It’s pretty hard to please both of us. I would email Merrick lists of names I liked and he was quick to slash through my suggestions!

So one day in April I emailed him another list of 24 names and the first name on the list was Lily. He emailed me back that he liked 5 of the names, one of which was Lily. We emailed back and forth about the names and narrowed it down to Lily as our top contender, but we’d keep looking. Later that day Merrick told me that he thought it was funny that Lily was at the top of the list because the day before he had actually had a dream that we had named our baby Lily. Crazy!

Between April and July we kept looking and even discounted Lily for a while when we watched TV one week because three shows we watched had Lily’s on them (Gossip Girl, Modern Family, and How I Met Your Mother), and plus it’s such a popular name right now. But we kept coming back to it.

So then it was July and the baby was coming any day and we needed to decide. We had Lily and another name or two that we liked and couldn’t decide. I was talking with Avery about it on the way to her swimming lessons one day and she said, “I like Lily. Do you like Lily, Mom?” I said I did. “Do you like Lily, Camryn?” She said she did. “Does Dad like Lily?” I said he did. “So let’s name her Lily!” I thought it was cute and so I called Merrick to tell him that Avery had decided for us. He was good with that and probably just as relieved as I was to have it settled. So Lily she became!

As for her middle name, we wanted something that was similar to Avery and Camryn’s middle names (Avery Elizabeth and Camryn Olivia) – very feminine, classic, 3-4 syllables, etc. and Amelia fit the bill quite well. It even started with a vowel like theirs! I told this to my sister Britney (the baby naming enthusiast of the family) who quickly emailed me back all of the Amelia’s in our family history. :) One of which was Elizabeth Amelia Sharp Bowles, who is actually the Elizabeth that Avery’s middle name comes from. Merrick and I discovered early in our marriage that we are actually related (eek!) through Robert Bowles and Elizabeth Amelia Sharp and so we thought it would be cool to use this name for Avery and it conveniently worked out for Lily’s middle name too!

So that’s how our little precious became Lily Amelia Smith.

Sometimes I wonder if we had waited until she was born to name her if we really would have named a 10 lb 4 oz chunky sweetie such a delicate name? ;) Hehe, oh well she won’t be such a chunk forever (unfortunately! – I love those cheeks and rolls!!).