What are we going to call this kid?

I'd love some advice on names.

We have three names on our girl list. They are:

Eva Katherine

Eliza Katherine

Camilla Jane

I love the name Eva, but worry about the popularity of Ava and other Eva-like names. Also, my baby sister has it on her baby name list, which makes me a little bit reluctant to steal it. It's my great-great-grandmother's name. Katherine is my middle name, and I've always wanted to give it to a daughter as her middle nane, but we didn't with Annie, because we thought Caroline sounded a lot better with Anne.

Eliza has always been THE name we'd use if we had a second daughter. I still like it, but I'm just not sure if I love it anymore. The plan was always to call the baby Liza, but I think that if we used it now, we'd call the baby Eliza instead. Eliza is one of Eddie's great-great-grandmothers.

I think we're both leaning towards Camilla this time. Eddie's great-aunt is Camilla Kimball, he has an aunt named Camilla, and it's the name his parents would have used if they had had another daughter. But Camilla has a few problems. First of all, we wouldn't use Katherine as a middle name, because I don't like the way both Camilla and Katherine start with the same sound. Eddie LOVES the name Jane, so that's why we'd use Jane instead. Secondly, Eddie's cousin (Aunt Camilla's son) named his dd Camilla and maybe that's just too much Camilla for one family (although he has 50 cousins on that side of the family and rarely sees this particular cousin. In Eddie's generation there are 3 cousins named Andrew, and the youngest Andrew is Camilla's son, so it's not like there hasn't been some duplicate naming going on in the family already). And if I haven't totally lost you by now, my brother's dd's name is Jamila (pronounced Ja-mee-la). Her nickname is Mila (mee-la). If we named the baby Camilla, we'd call her Milla for short (mih-la). Is that just too close? We don't see them all that often.

Now onto the boys names:

Josiah Eric

Elias Christian

I love the idea of naming the baby Josiah Eric. Eddie's dad is Joe (Joseph) and my dad is Eric, so I think this would be a great way to honor both of our dads. I don't want to do Joseph, because I don't like the idea of honoring one dad over the other, and by tweaking the first name a little bit, I think they'd sort of get equal honor. Also, I like Josiah better. But Josiah has problems. First of all, Eddie and I pronounce it differently. I say Joe-zigh-yah, while he says, Joe-sigh-yah. We'd definitely have to get on the same pronunciation page, lol. Also, I don't EVER want to call the baby Joey. Finally, Eddie thinks it might be a little bit too out there but likes that the baby could use Joe if he didn't want to be called Josiah.

When I was pg with Bryce, we had a short list with three baby names. They were Bryce, Isaac and Elias. I fought hard for Elias with #1, but Bryce was the compromise name. Eddie won me over to Isaac before I even got pg with him, but I still really like Elias. We'd call him Eli. Christian is Eddie's middle name, so they would have the same initials and the same middle name. I guess there aren't really any drawbacks to this name, except that I really like the idea of using our dads' names.

So, can anyone help me shed some light on this naming conundrum? Eddie, of course, doesn't want to talk about until we know if we're having a boy or a girl, and I can't resist the urge to hash the whole thing out right now.

Oh, and if you want to see all of our rules, check out this post that I wrote when I was pregnant with Isaac:

http://pregnancyandbaby.com/pregnancy/baby/Week-11--The-rules-of-the-name-3397.htm

--originally published 6/28/06