Britta Alice: Behind a Name

I love names. I love the history and meaning of names. I love the nostalgia and tradition behind names. And I love naming babies.

I admittedly get a bit obsessed. I like considering names from all different perspectives, and want to get it "just right."

So I thought a lot about it. And talked to bugged Jeromy a lot about it.

As with Linnea, our name criteria was as follows:
1. Scandinavian (Jeromy and I are both Scandinavian, and we really like honoring the heritage).
2. Unique, but not weird.
3. Fairly easy to pronounce and spell
4. Sound good (obviously) with Carlson
5. No alliteration (this is Jeromy's) - so no K or C names, or names that have the same first letter as the middle name

 It makes sense, I suppose, that many of the names we considered this time around we're ones that we talked about with Linnea.

Quite honestly, the pool is pretty small. To have it be Scandinavian, and not weird... and not starting with a C or K. It's a pretty short list...

Side story...Jeromy and I both got foiled by pop culture. Jeromy has always loved the name Siri, and probably would have named Linnea that, had it been his decision only. I'm glad we didn't, because within a few months after Linnea was born, Siri on iPhones came out.

Although Jeromy might have still used the name for Britta, I vetoed it.  

I got foiled by Frozen. I have loved the name Elsa for a long time. Again, it was a name we discussed for Linnea. But I knew I wanted to use Beth as the middle name...and I found out that Elsa is a form of Elizabeth, so that's redundant. And then Disney had to go and steal the name.

So anyways...no Siri. No Elsa. No K names. No C names.

We threw around a few names...

I was really sad to have "lost" Elsa, because it was a way to honor my sister. (Linnea's middle name Beth does that well). I still wanted to honor my sister through the name, but wasn't sure how to do so.

Then we talked about Alice. Alice was my sister's middle name. Alice was my grandma - my dad's mom - whom I never got to meet. She died when my dad was a teenager. Alice is also a family name on Jeromy's side. We decided on Alice before deciding on Britta.

Through our criteria we narrowed the list down to two - one was Britta (obviously). The other name is one that we really like. But it sounded weird with Linnea. And then we realized that an added criteria this time around was that it needed to sound good with Linnea.

So we both found ourselves leaning towards Britta.

It didn't feel quite right at first... I'm not sure why. But as the weeks went by, when I thought of her, I thought Britta. Britta Alice.

Somewhere along the line I realized that Britta means strong. I love that.

As with Linnea, we didn't actually name her until she was born. Although we knew that we had pretty much decided, we waited. Waited to see it sweet little face. Waited to hold her in our arms. Waited to hear her cry.

And then we happily looked in her eyes, and told her her name...Britta Alice.

This was a really long post to explain how we came up with her name. I told you I'm obsessed. ;-)