Rosemary Agnes

We kept her name a secret. The first time anyone ever heard it, was when Andrew called people from the hospital hall, minutes after her birth, to tell them about our new baby daughter.

It is really hard to come up with a name. Maybe the hardest bit of pregnancy, besides worrying constantly if your little bean is thriving in there. You want something that works as well at 9 as it would at 19 or 90. While I was pregnant, we’d spout off ideas to each other. We both had little lists that we merged into a shortlist. Andrew didn’t make very many suggestions, but he had definite ideas about what he didn’t like, and he had a few names right from the beginning that he was fairly stuck on. I was constantly coming up with all kinds of ideas. There were a lot of names, but not very many that we felt were great. We had it narrowed to one name most of my pregnancy, but in the final weeks, we completely changed our minds.

We chose Rosemary as a first name. “Rose” because our girl was born in England and it’s a traditional emblem of this country. The “Mary” part because we wanted to honor my mom, whose name is Mary Jane.

For a middle name we used “Agnes.” Andrew was close with his grandma Agnes, and we liked the old-fashioned sound.

We didn’t actually make the final decision until she was born. She was there and that was that. Now, I can’t imagine her with any other name. It has such a sweet, classic sound to it that fits her perfectly.