So what's in a middle name?

You've heard how we selected Caroline - from the song "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond. Neil recently confessed he wrote the song for Caroline Kennedy. Inspired by her innocence and elegance, he wrote the song on a napkin after he saw a photo of her ride horses in a magazine. He recorded it years later, but didn't reveal his secret to JFK's daughter until he performed via satellite for her 50th birthday in 2007. You can learn more here: http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2007/11/21/sweet_caroline_revealed/

So - that's the story behind our future daughter's first name. That left us perplexed to determine a middle name. Supposedly, if you don't select a middle name for your child, the birth certificate will read "NMI" for no middle initial. Well, we didn't want to plague her for life with some freakish acronym instead of a middle name.

My middle name is Alaine, making my initials C.A.S. My mother's initials are also C.A.S. for Carole Ann Sutton. In keeping with the tradition, we brainstormed middle names for Caroline.

Following much contemplation, we arrived at "Aurelia" after a character in one of our favorite movies, Love Actually. To see a clip, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCldiADPDEM

With a little research, we learned Aurelia is quite a historically rich name. She was the mother of Julius Caesar. There is a crater on the planet Venus called Aurelia. Apparently there is a story of Princess Aurelia that perhaps we can read together sometime about a royal heiress who just wants to be like the commonfolk to roam and learn without the hype of being the center of attention.

Plus, we also learned that my mom wanted to name me "Aralia," pronounced the same way as "Aurelia," which is a flower. But my dad liked "Celeste" better. That pretty much sealed the deal. Aurelia it is...

Since Aurelia means means "golden," when combined with Caroline, which means "song of joy," I suppose our daugher's full name means "golden song of joy." Sounds beautiful to me. I hope she likes it. And I hope it prevents her from getting beat up on the playground! And if it's a boy, we always have Calvin Alexander as our fallback!