A rose by any other name....

So...I bet some of you are wondering about the name Molly. I had blogged earlier about having trouble finding a name. I wanted it to have a theme but didn't want it to be too popular, or weird, or remind me of naughty students I had worked with in the past.

I entertained using another family name and one that came up was my grandmother on my Dad's side--Dorothy. It was old-fashioned and had some literary/cinematic references and had a plethora of nicknames. It was considered and then, reading a Grandmother Remembers journal she put together for us, I found that she was unofficially named Mollie until becoming Dorothy on her birth certificate. Other names that were considered were Lucy and Lavinia but due to Mr. B's dislike for Lucille Ball and for Lavinia being a name that was just too old fashioned, they were dropped from the running. Dorothy did remain until the bitter end.

We also entertained Irish names like Fay, Renny and Fiona but Renny made me think of the show Hee-Haw and Miss F is scared of the movie "Shrek" and really didn't like Fiona for that reason. Fay just seemed a bit too middle-namish. Another Irish name? Molly. There's even a nice, sad, drunk in the pub and singing song about Molly and a statue of her with her cockles and mussels in Dublin.

Adding to Team Molly ---- I have had several Molly's that have made a difference in my life and of course, I worship at the alter of Molly Ringwald. Then, while gathering free books at my library conference I kept grabbing ones with characters named, you guessed it, Molly. A sign? Perhaps.

However, working agains Molly was 1) it's in the top 100 names, 2) it's the number 2 dog name in the U.S. and 3) it means 'bitter' in Hebrew

Miss F, however, was the final decision maker in the naming process. We always threw out names at her (while she still insisted on Emily and Paula and Pumpkin) and she really took to Molly. She even starting to tell people that was her baby sister's name before we had made any final decisions on the matter. On the way to the hospital we decided that yes, she was indeed, our little Molly.

And the middle name, Nicole, is for my sister as it was her middle name and now Molly has the same initials that Melissa had. MNB.

Oh, and let it be known that Miss F said I would have the baby on April 4th. While I did not, I did get admitted to Labor and Delivery before midnight on April 4th.