How Orelia Got Her Name

John and I have been discussing baby names - especially baby girl names - for years.  I'm very particular about name choices (and John would say about everything), and felt very strongly that our daughter should not have a trendy name.  I didn't want her stuck being the third Harper in her fifth grade class.  As a result, some of our previously top choices got nixed as they entered the top 50 names of 2011.

John and I were vacationing in Stinson Beach over a year ago and we found a woman selling vintage posters (actual vintage posters that had been transferred to canvas - not the type of "vintage" posters they sell at Bed, Bath, and Beyond).  We found the French poster, above, and immediately liked it.  We loved the name Orelia and thought it would be fun to buy the poster and hang it up in our future daughter's nursery.  We went home and did some research into the name and found out it means "golden" and is an alternate spelling to the French name, Aurelia.  The company advertised in the poster no longer exists, so we didn't have to worry about the drink coming stateside.  We went back, bought the poster, and tucked it away for future use.

Once we found out we were pregnant with a baby girl, I had high hopes that no celebrity would name their daughter Orelia (or Aurelia) and ruin the name for me.  We kept checking where the name fell on the popular name lists (nowhere, as it turns out).

People often say "hmm that name sounds familiar," and I usually remind them that Aurelia is the name of the Portuguese woman from Love Actually who falls in love with Colin Firth.  Or perhaps they knew that Aurelia was the name of Julius Caesar's mother.

So our special girl has her own unique name, but hopefully one that isn't too offbeat to make her life difficult. Her middle name is Marie, after my mom's middle name, so she hasn't lost touch with her roots.

We've been planning for Orelia Marie for a long time, and we couldn't be more thrilled that she finally arrived to claim her name.