How We Named Our Baby Girl

Naming your baby, especially your first, is equally as fun as it is difficult. With J being a teacher, this made naming our little girl an even longer process as most names I suggested, he’d taught a child who had sort of “ruined” that name for him haha.

We did both agree we wanted a traditional name, that could be shortened and we also wanted her middle name to be a nod towards feminism as we were having a girl 100 years after women gained the vote, which we thought was something worth celebrating in her name.

I had first heard the name Penelope from the actress Penelope Cruz but also more recently Katie Pipers little girl is also called Penelope – when I mentioned the name to J, he also loved it too. We both also loved how we could shorten it to P or Penny.

We then started discussing middle names such as Emmeline, Rosa and Millicent but none seemed to work with Penelope. Which is when my dad suggested Hope, which is what was given to a lot of women during the time of when they gained the vote.

So Penelope Hope was her planned name for the final few months of my pregnancy.

However when she was born, her middle name just didn’t seem to be personal enough to us and I sat up most the night as tiny baby Penny and J slept in the delivery suite, trying to think of a middle name we’d both love. When J woke up, we discussed names that’d mean a lot to us, and we both chose to change her middle name to Lavender.

Taken in the delivery suite when I couldn’t sleep.

Lavender was my biggest craving during pregnancy, I used it to relax whilst practising hypnobirthing and it was also used during the birth to keep me calm. Myself and my three sisters also all have flowers as middle names -Jasmin, Poppy, Lily, Rose – and my moms middle name is Heather, so this was continuing the tradition for girls in my family to have floral middle names.

And J and I just fell in love with it.

So that is how our little Penelope Lavender was named.

I love hearing how parents named their baby’s so please comment below your name story’s.

With Love,

Eleanor Jasmin x