What’s in a name? That which we call a rose…
“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;“
–Juliet from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”
We knew we were going to name our daugter edith way back in the first trimester, the name kind of just came to us and we seemed to know it was right. However, we were totally lost on the middle name. We were so lost that we gave up even thinking about it for a few months. A few weeks before she was born we were on a walk in the rose garden, and erin put her foot down and said that we had to choose the middle name that day from a rose that was in the garden (the are hundreds of roses). So we set off looking, before we found a middle name though, we found that in 1924 the portland rose queen was named edith.
This inspired us to keep looking. After a long while, and roses named ‘midnight beauty’ and ‘president kennedy’ erin came across an english rose named ’sister elizabeth’, and it just so happens that i have a sister named elizabeth.
It was getting dark and i was getting tired of squinting at signs trying to read their name, so i found the index of all the roses in the park and scanned it for any name we had talked about. At the very end of the list, I found ‘etoile de holland’; ‘etoile’ means ‘resembling a star’, and erin had really wanted a middle name that had something to do with stars or space because the night we found out we were pregnant we saw the aurora borealis from our backyard.
And there we had our names.
hidie replied:
Love her name. Such a special story. Peter, I have been enjoying your mobile blog. I check regularly so keep those wonderful pics coming. Sorry I am commenting here, but am too lazy to sign up for a preposterous account. I should though because it looks good for quick blog posts. I wanted to point out that in the most recent pic “Finally Asleep,” Edie is wearing the same outfit that Penelope is wearing in “Hola from Penelope” posted on my blog. LOL. They’re twins! Sending lots of love from the Reedfam.
August 4, 2008 at 10:13 pm. Permalink.
justpeter replied:
the thing with posterous is that you don’t even need to create an account, you just send send an email to post@posterous.com or text message 41411 “post [your post]“
August 5, 2008 at 3:50 pm. Permalink.
hidie replied:
I see you don’t have to sign up for an account, but it was asking me to sign up and log in so that I could leave a comment. A few of my posts to my blog are actually from my phone, so my mobile blogging works out for me. Love the coffee shop pics, especially the one of Peter sipping the latte. Edie is so tiny! Enjoy all of that cuddle time on your chest b/c she will grow so fast. Penelope is practically big already and it has only been a few months. Also love the pic of Erin resting with her in the hammock. What a great place to hang out with the baby in the summertime. Hope August is August and not Aug-tober!
August 6, 2008 at 6:50 am. Permalink.
Sarsbombadillo replied:
What a great story. I knew you chose the names from the rose garden, but it was nice to see the pics and hear about all the details! How cool it will be to tell Edie when she’s older!
August 6, 2008 at 9:51 am. Permalink.