What's in a Name?!

One of the first questions we have gotten after Isla was born is, "where did you get Isla?" I wish that there was a cooler story to go along with this question but the truth is that I found the name on the internet :). It was actually the girl name I had when I was pregnant with Carter. I just fell in love with it and thought is was soft, beautiful and not too common. There is an actress named Isla and everytime I saw her name in a magazine I just continued to fall more in love with it.

That being said, it was harder to commit to Isla than I thought it would be. Even though I loved it, I knew that it is going to be mispronounced and that I would probably always have to spell it for people (it is pronounced eye-la). I also know that there would be a lot of opinions about the name, which is why I chose not to disclose our baby names until after the baby is here :). Matt and I are definitely 'we have to see the baby' people before deciding on a name and I always maintained that upon seeing the baby I would just 'know.' That was definitely the case with Carter but not with Miss Isla. She was definitely more of an 'Isla' than the other two girl  names we had but there was a brief second where I almost wanted Matt to go back to the Internet and re-start our baby name search. But Matt just 'knew' she was Isla and that was it :). We do get questions about the pronunciation but we also get a lot of compliments on her name too. Fun random fact: Isla is the name of my labor nurse's grandma.

Elizabeth was much easier to decide on and it was always the middle name for a girl. In my family, the middle name is always a family name. Carter's middle name is obviously after my dad so I wanted Isla's middle name to be after someone in Matt's family. Matt's grandma's (Carter's GG) middle name was Elizabeth and it just so happens that my grandma's (my dad's  mom) first name is Elizabeth! I love that we can honor two family members with one beautiful name. So there you have it...how our Isla Elizabeth came to be :).

"Words have meaning and names have power." ~Author Unknown