What's in a name? Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

     When we found out I was pregnant toward the beginning of the year, naturally we started trying to think of names. With Lily we seemed to have several girls' names, but really struggled to find a boy's name. This time, though, we decided early on it would be Dorian if it was a boy, despite the distasteful character in Mr.Wilde's novel. I also really loved the name Henry, and even tried to sway Tomáš with a reminder of his favorite soccer player, Thierry Henry, but to no avail. For a girl, my first plan of attack was to think of people I have loved throughout my life. I remembered a very special little orphan girl in Mexico I'd grown very attached to when I was 14, but her name, Ledecia, just didn't seem to quite fit. Then I remembered another little Mexican girl I'd met the next year, a bubbly, bright, outgoing, curly-headed little sweetheart and I immediately fell in love with her name. I asked Tomáš what he thought and he liked the name, but was pretty concerned about the spelling. In Slovak, once you learn the alphabet, you almost can't misspell anything because everything is written just as it sounds. So he kept imagining year after year, teacher after teacher calling out her name, mispronounced, and how annoying that would be for her. Then we thought about an alternate spelling, which would do away with that problem, not to mention give an extra sweetness to the meaning but we discovered that that name would not be accepted in Slovakia. Here, you cannot name your child anything you want. The name has to be on a particular website in order to be accepted by the state. I was crushed. Then we found out that Tomáš had looked at the wrong website, and that our spelling actually would be accepted. I was on cloud nine. But then...
     Tomáš' dad pointed out some things that kids might call her or say to her in Slovak, and it seemed to me that he was right. They seemed very obvious teases and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Thus began the great name search of 2012. Never did I ever think it would be so hard.
     One of the main difficulties in coming to an agreement was that Tomáš and I grew up in different countries and, as a result, he tended to like the names that had never been used here in Slovakia, but were ones that I had grown up with and knew a million of like Abby and Amy. The Slovak names that I liked usually elicited a belly laugh from Tomáš along with his assurance that only grandmas use those names. And so the search continued...
     Next I googled French girls' names because I tend to like them and was excited when I found a lot that I liked. Topping the list was Leonie. I think it's so adorable, but got a big ol' no from Tomáš. I also really liked the idea of naming them a girl's name that could have a boy's nickname. This came from a silly old Cary Grant movie I liked called Father Goose, which had a little girl named Harriet who insisted on being called Harry. I begged Tomáš for Henrieta so we could call her Henry, or maybe Georgine or Georgette for Georgie, but again, no dice. Other misses included Esme, which I've always loved, but Tomáš found ridiculous and thought it didn't even sound like a name. Delphine, which means dolfin in Slovak. Hazel, which sounds all too much like hajzel in Slovak. Emeline, Eliza, Etta, Elsa and Sylvie. We both liked Lejla (Layla) quite a bit, but I wanted to love it. I thought of another little Mexican girl I'd adored at a children's home in Tijuana named Lisette (Lizet), but T didn't like it either. Otherwise, the closest we had come to an agreement was Dotty or Ida (pronounced Eeda). Then one night, mere weeks before my due date Tomáš came into the kitchen and asked, ''so, is it gonna be Ida?'' I told him that I liked the name, but it just didn't seem like her name. ''What does seem like her name?'' he asked. ''Rosy,'' I replied, which is the original name we both liked from day one. The curly-headed girl from Mexico. ''Rosy it is, then.'' he said, followed by a good scolding for creating seven months of drama. Oh, how I had agonized over the name.
     So, at 1:43 pm on Sunday, November the 11th, 2012 we welcomed little Rosy Štrbavá into the world, weighing 3 kilos, 200 grams and measuring 50 cm in length. She turned three weeks old yesterday, which I will write about in an upcoming post.
P.S. I had some pictures for this post but was rudely informed that my storage is full. I'll see what I can do about that...