Sophie and Noa
While my peers practiced their fancy signatures and doodled the names of their crushes, the possible names of my future children filled the margins of my seventh grade assignment notebook. By eighth grade it was decided. I would have four daughters when I grew up: Carly, Nell, Aiden, and Sophie. Carly would be short for Caroline, and Nell would be short for Eleanor. Sophie, though, Sophie had my heart. The name, to me, always felt playful and also sophisticated, strong and also soft. It’s melody rose and fell like a wave as I repeated it to myself. Soh-fee. Sophie. I loved seeing it written. I loved the way it felt in my mouth.
My great grandmother, whom we called Mutti, lived to be 104 years old and died the summer before my sophomore year of high school. At her funeral, I sat on a cushioned chair in the funeral home and turned the program over in my hands. I stared in disbelief seeing her full name in print: Rose Sophie. I had not known her middle name. I believe in signs and took this as one. Now Sophie had familial significance.
With time, I traded the assignment notebook scribbles for a note in my phone. I titled it “Family Christmas Gifts” to disguise its top secret content, and the list grew every time I came across a name I liked. On airplane flights I would open the note and play with different first and middle name combinations and see how sibling names looked strung together. How would all the names look next to each other on a Christmas card? Not knowing the last name was a hangup for awhile.
Marc Perez entered my life my senior year in college, and his Spanish last name inspired Sophia, called Sophie for short. Sophia Perez. It fit. How long do you wait in a dating relationship before you propose future children’s names? Whatever the answer is, I’m sure I pushed the boundary.
When we were newly married, I saw the name Noa for the first time. The name sparked immediate delight. Noa! For a girl! How simultaneously sweet, beautiful, and bold. Saying it left me with a smile on my face. Noa. A three-letter, two-syllable name that packs a punch. I researched the name and learned that Noa is not simply a feminine take on the masculine “Noah” but a different name entirely, although pronounced the same way. Noa shows up in an Old Testament story of five sisters who, at a time when women could not possess property, petitioned to Moses–and won–that they should be the rightful heirs to their father’s land after his passing. An Old Testament story of female empowerment? Yes, please. As the oldest of three girls myself and the daughter of a mother who is also the oldest of three girls, the bonds of sisterhood are deeply embedded within me. This history attracted me to the name even more.
In 2018 we found out our firstborn was a daughter, and Marc and I went to the hospital with Sophie and Noa as our final names. Loving each equally, we wanted to wait and see what felt right. Before we even moved from our delivery room, Marc whispered, “I think she’s Sophie.” I agreed. “I feel like Noa is coming, but this isn’t her,” I added. Marc nodded in recognition. Sophia means God’s wisdom, and we chose my mom’s name, Valerie, as her middle name. Valerie means valiance or courage. We prayed our daughter would possess both God’s wisdom and the courage to live it out.
We named Sophie Sophie and prayed that Noa would still come to us. Two years and nine months later, she did. With our second pregnancy we didn’t find out the sex of the baby in advance. However, Noa means movement, and in the womb, she was in constant motion. If it’s a girl, we said, she must be our Noa. And she was!
After honoring my mother with Sophie’s name, we wanted to bring Marc’s mother into Noa’s name. We chose to use her maiden name Bechamps as Noa’s middle name. Now we follow our sweet Noa B. all around as she lives up to her name crawling, cruising, and climbing everywhere. She has sparked delight in me ever since the very first time I laid eyes on her name.
Last year’s Christmas card looked that much more complete:
Marc, Kaitlin, Sophie, and Noa
We still hope to add one more baby to our family, one last name to our list. The name note on my phone carries with it such a sense of possibility. Who else might join us? What letters will assemble to compose the final name? What will it feel like for us all to be here, named and, most importantly, known?
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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "A Name".
