What’s in a Name?

With the announcement of the approaching arrival of ourdaughter, the first question everyone asks is “have you picked out names yet?”We had picked out names a few months ago, but recently finalized spelling.

Our little girl will be named Ellanore Suzanne. We will callher Ella.

To preventively answer your next question, we simply lovedthe name Ellanore. We both grew up with very common names, and always hadmultiple friends, classmates, and coworkers with the same name – we love thatour little girl will have a unique name. We choose to add a second “L” to thespelling in order that “Ella” will be a shorter version of her name; hopefullythis will eliminate confusion on how many “Ls” are in which version of hername.

As for her middle name, Suzanne is a family name on mymother’s side of the family. My grandmother’s name is “Annie,” my mother isnamed “Ann,” while my middle name is “Susanne.” My parents chose to spell mymiddle name with an “S” instead of a “Z” in the middle because my maiden name,Bezanson, had one “Z” and they didn’t wantto burden me with an overload of “Zs”. I love the fact that 3 generations haveall had a variation of “Ann” in their name, but no two people had the sameversion. In order to keep this tradition, we are going to switch back to thestandard spelling of Suzanne.