Abby, Zoë and Enzo

Enzo must know that there was once someone else special to Christopher with this name.  He must have been listening in on our conversations about this name while he was in utero.  Yes, Christopher once had a beautiful doberman whom he named Enzo.  Let me say now that our baby boy is not named after the dog, we've simply re-used a name we both liked an agreed upon.  If anything, he is named after his great, great, great grandfather in Sicily, Vincenzo.  That being said, Enzo makes these noises that sound just like a little high pitched yip, like he's barking.  It is so funny to hear him making the same noises puppy Enzo used to make.  He makes other noises in his sleep that sound like dreaming dog noises too.  I just hope he doesn't learn to growl.  Yesterday Enzo was making one such noise and Christopher called to me saying "Enzo is barking", I told him that he'd better not start saying things like that or else people will draw wrong conclusions.  Also, everyone asks if Enzo is short for something, like Lorenzo or Vincenzo, it is, but just not in this case.  We wanted to stick with a short first name for all of our children and a longer middle name.

Here is the information for the names we chose:

Enzo
Meaning: Its source is ent, an Ancient Germanic name meaning "Giant."
Popularity: The name Enzo ranked 890th in popularity for males of all ages in a sample of 2000-2003 Social Security Administration statistics.
Narrative: The name could have originated as a short form of Lorenzo or Vicenzo, or as an Italianized form of the German name Heinz.

Giovanni
Meaning: Its source is Yochanan, a Hebrew name meaning "God's grace."
Nicknames: Gianni, Nino, Nanni, Gio, Vanni, Giannino and Giova
Source Forms: Yochanan
Popularity: The name Giovanni ranked 197th in popularity for males of all ages in a sample of 2000-2003 Social Security Administration statistics and 794th in popularity for males of all ages in a sample of the 1990 US Census.
Yochanan was rendered in Greek as Ioannes, which in turn was translated into Latin as Iohannes. From one or both of these intermediaries come the many modern forms of this name, including John (English), Johannes (German), Juan (Spanish),Eoin (Gaelic), and Jean (French).