What's in a name?

Eleanor and I have been co-sleeping again. We gave it up when she was four months old and I couldn't take the all-night nurse-a-thon. Four months meant she was a big girl, and big girls can sleep in their own bed. Now she is almost 11 months old, and we have come full circle. I can't take the all-night stand-over-the-crib-arm-hug-a-thon, so she is back in my bed. This has worked well for the past week (look at how cute we are!), but it means that typing blog posts in bed is impossible. I pass the time by reading blogs instead.

I follow a couple of blogs and all of them have a similar theme: babies. Some of them are sick, some of them are healthy, some of them are runners but they are all mothers of babies. This one particular post about naming babies had me reeling. This woman has chosen names for babies that I think are horrendous. She epitomizes everything that is wrong with L.A hipsters having babies young "while it's still cool" and living a lifestyle that makes me green with envy. That is, until I read this post about WHY she named her babies what she did.

Her twin girls are called Boheme and Reverie. Ugh. Bo and Rev. How awful, right? But she has them both backed by songs and poignant moments with her husband and beautiful quotes from Longfellow and I was sold. Those kids are going to love their names when they can explain how they came to be called them. What gets me the most is what her and her husband came to realize after they were born. Bo Rev is Beaux Reves in French, which means sweet dreams. How lovely is that? You can read the full post (along with beautiful pics of the girls) here. 

So it got me thinking, how did we get to the name Eleanor? When people ask, we usually shrug and say, "We just liked it", which is the truth, but not the full truth. It is true we liked old-fashioned names, and Eleanor was short-listed with Vivienne (deemed to butch. "Hey Viv! Get the softball gear outta the truck!") and Evelyn (pronounced eve-lyn. Too complicated when everyone would pronounce her name eh-VAH-lyn GOO-dee and she would forever be correcting them: "No, it's EVE-lyn GOW-dee". Nightmarish stuff).

But Eleanor was a front runner from the get go because of a song from a certain British invasion group - and not the one you are thinking of. We used to tell this story and everyone would go, "Yeah. The Beatles. Eleanor Rigby" and that is definitely an answer that fits, but it is not correct. It is a song by the band that didn't have "Mania" following their name, and didn't have hoards of people burning their records and then later buying them on iTunes. The Turtles wrote a song simply called "Eleanor" and the lyrics read like this: 

You've got a thing about you/ That I just can't live without you

There's no one like you, Eleanor, really

Eleanor, gee I think you're swell

And you'd really do me well

You're my pride and joy et cetera

I thought it would be pretty cool for her to have her own song, and I loved that "et cetera". It's a conjunction for all the wonderful things I feel about her, but am too lazy to write down! Perfect! People always comment on how old-fashioned it sounds, and I always reply, "If she hates it, she'll make a wonderful great-aunt one day!" I like to believe that this foresight means she will lead a long and healthy life.

And like my blogger friend, I had a post-birth naming revelation myself not too long ago. Eleanor's birth date was a very special thing for me for a number of reasons. First, she was born on her due date and second that due date happened to be my birthday. It also happens to be World Human Rights Day, which was the day chosen by the UN to observe the Universal Declarations of Human Rights. And who chaired the committee to pass such a declaration? Eleanor Roosevelt. Amazing.

Katharine: Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing:

They call me Katherine that do talk of me.

Petruchio: You lie, in faith, for you are call'd plain Kate,

And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst...

As for me, I like to think that I was named for Catherine the Great or at least Katharine from Taming of the Shrew/my favourite Cole Porter musical Kiss Me Kate... A girl can dream, no?

So, kiss me, Kate, thou lovely loon,
'Ere we start on our honeymoon.
So kiss me, Kate, darling devil devine,
For now thou shall ever be mine.