Women are like lionesses at the gate of the home. . . . She guards that gate, and things matter to that family if they matter to her. . . . Sisters, you are each like the lioness at the gate. This means that there has to be some prioritizing. I was taught years ago that when our priorities are out of order, we lose power. If we need power and influence to carry out our mission, then our priorities have to be straight.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Mystery Name

Michael has finally consented. He's agreed to the name that he suggested and given me permission to share it with you. I must say, we were all very impressed by your guesses, and the amount of effort some of you put into Googling French baby names to try and get it right. We even loved some of your suggestions, but not enough to change our minds on the name. We especially loved Lisette, Collette, Juliette, and Isabelle. Oh, and of course my sister's suggestion: Camembert Baguette. Thanks for everyone playing along!

So officially, this little girl's name will be Rachelle Corinne. Rachelle is the French version of Rachel, and Corinne is pronounced core-in. Our other top names were Elena, Gabrielle, Emmeline, Jocelyn, and Francesca. These names would still be considered in the future for other little girls (especially Emmeline), but Rachelle won us over for many reasons:

1) It means "little lamb". The Aagards have a heritage of sheep herding and there is still an Aagard sheep ranch up at the Utah/Wyoming/Idaho border to this day. So anything lamb or sheep means something to our namesake. Little lamb is a great way to remind our little girl of her Danish pioneer roots.

2) It's a version of my name. With the "shell" sound at the end reminding me of Shelley and the "rah" sound reminding me of my middle name, Rae, it just seemed like a cool combo of my name that was legit and not made up in a "Renesmee" way.

3) It's a French name that Americans won't slaughter. While we don't expect everyone to be able to spell or pronounce Shaelyn, we expect most people to be able to. We wanted the same for this little girl. In fact, Elena (pronounced Eh-lyn-ah) was one of our favorites, but I could just hear people saying E-lean-ah or Ah-lain-ah, so that was out. The only way I can see people mispronouncing Rachelle is if they say Row-chelle instead of Rah-chelle, or not knowing that "chelle" in French is "shell" and saying some form of Rachel instead. But that would be really sad if they didn't know how to pronounce "chelle". Although I wouldn't put it past some people.

We've told Shaelyn that her little sister's name is going to be Rachelle, and she calls her "chelle". Adorable. One time she actually said "ah-chelle". Now let's see if she's as excited to meet Rachelle as she is to say her name.

Cleverly written by shelley