why lorelei?

Lots of people have asked us how we decided on our daughter's name. Here's the skinny:

Back in December and early January, before we knew we were having a girl, Jason and I compiled a list of names we liked for both genders. We found this site particularly helpful -- it lets you put in names you love and gives you ideas of what else you might like, too. By the time we had our anatomy ultrasound, we had a list of about 10-15 names for girls and a similar-length list for boys.

After the initial shock that we were having a girl wore off, we spent a few days musing over the list separately, then agreed to come back together to discuss our top picks. We came to the table with our two favorite names -- and, lo and behold, Lorelei was in the top two for us both! So we've known that's what we'd name her since the end of January.

Several people have asked if her name was Gilmore Girls inspired. Actually, no! I love that show (Jason used to like it too, even though he probably won't admit it), but it didn't even occur to me until several weeks after we'd chosen Lorelei as her name and then I worried that everyone would think I named my daughter after a television character. And no, we didn't name her after the Styx song, either -- but you are welcome to sing it to her if you think it might help put her to sleep. (Really, anything would be great at this point.)

Her first middle name, Jane, was chosen for a variety of reasons. It's the name of Jason's paternal grandmother (well, sort of...you'll have to ask Jason about the name "Blockhead" sometime) and Jason really wanted to honor his grandmother and his aunt Julie, with whom he lived during his senior year of high school and who has a pretty special relationship with him, by giving Lorelei a family middle name. Jane is also the first name of my favorite author, so I had no objection! And it's one syllable long, which goes well with the rest of her rather lengthy name.

Her second middle name is, of course, my maiden name. When we got married, Jason was fine with me hyphenating (and even legally changed his name to take McNamara as a second middle name for himself so we'd both have a "change"), but he didn't want to saddle our kid(s) with any hyphenations. That made sense to me, but I wanted to pass on my name in some way, so we came up with this as a compromise.

Lorelei will be getting another name this fall when we have her naming ceremony -- but that's still in the works and we haven't decided on just the right Hebrew moniker yet!