Abby, Zoë and Enzo

Working on picking out a name for this baby has brought up discussions about the choosing of Abby and Zoë's names.  Chris and I go back and forth about this, him saying that he chose the names and me saying that we chose together.  We finally worked it out to where we both agree about how picking the girls' names came about, and I've been asked to write down my agreement about how things happened.  The reason I'm doing this is because there's a certain name Chris just brought up as a choice for this baby that I wasn't in agreement with... Fernando.  He said he wouldn't back down and take this name "off the table" unless I put in writing the agreement we came to this morning.  So here it is...

Chris and I both liked the name Zoë, and that was the first name we agreed on, before we knew the sex of the babies. (As a side note, we just could not agree on any boy names, we had actual agruments over them.  We did have a handful of girls names though.) Chris had the idea then to do an 'A' name and a 'Z' name so we'd have A to Z.  Once we found out both babies were girls, we were agreed on Zoë and had to pick an 'A' name.  I suggested the name Abigail, but Chris didn't like it that much and said just Abby.  I said that maybe we should at least put 'Abigail' on the birth certificate to give her more options, but he said that he'd like to do the names with four letters/characters for the first name, and eight for the middle name.  (Spelled Zoë when the umlaut is available, the acceptable spelling is Zoee, as the letter "e" is used immediately after the umlauted letter, when the umlaut is unavailable.  Thus making Zoë's name fit the 'four character' criteria) The reasoning behind this is that his favorite number is eight, and when you add the first and last name, they equal eight.  The middle names are eight.  When you add those together it's sixteen, which is evenly divisible by eight... any way you work it, it all adds up to the number thing.  For the middle names Chris was suggesting things that ended in a long 'a' sound, but close to what we finally agreed on.  I said that I'd like a 'hard' sounding ending since both first names ended with the short 'e' sound.  So, we agreed on Caitlynn and then Jaquelyn... but the spelling was still up for discussion.  I liked the spelling of 'lynn' for the ending (as apposed to 'lin' or 'lyn') which Chris agreed to for Zoë's middle name, but since it would make Abby's middle name nine letters instead of eight, I agreed to drop an 'n'.  And that is how we agreed on Abby Jaquelyn and Zoë Caitlynn for the names of our baby girls.  We had their names set by week 25 of the pregnancy.

Now for this baby's name.  It's been the opposite issue that we had with the girls as far as boy and girl names.  This whole pregnancy we haven't heard any girl names we really liked, but have thrown around some boy names.  We tried to come up with some names that began with a letter near the middle of the alphabet, so we'd have  beginning and end and one in the middle.  None really grabbed us though.  We've actually just had one name for the first name that was ever truly in the running, the others were just ideas.  When I was pregnant with the girls, one of the boy names Chris suggested was Vincenzo (Vin-chen-zo), a name he'd like since he was a teenager.  I'd never heard the name and looked at him like he was crazy and veto'd it right away.  This time when he brought up 'Enzo' as a choice, it had grown on me and I liked it as a name for our little boy too.  I thought, yet again, that maybe we'd do 'Vincenzo' just on the birth certificate, (it is eight letters after all) but Chris wanted to just do 'Enzo'.  Also, a couple of years ago I'd heard the name 'Giovanni' and really liked it and it has stuck with me.  We talked about some different options such as Giovanni Vincenzo, Vincenzo Giovanni, or Enzo Giovanni.  'Giovanni' isn't Chris' favorite, but he said that he'd agree to it as a middle name.  I lucked out that it's eight letters.  So, before this child is even born, we have it in writing that Chris picked the first name and I picked the middle name, this baby's name will be Enzo Giovanni.