middle name

I've been meaning to write this out for a few days - if nothing else, for posterity sake since it's kind of a cute story. And since Alannah doesn't have a "baby book" yet, I figured this was the best place. Besides, I am sure you are all curious about what her middle name might be.

I have been thinking about middle names for some time. In fact, Alannah has been the chosen first name for a girl for quite awhile, but we never came up with or settled on a middle name. So, this pregnancy I have been looking online and various websites and lists coming up with quite a variety of Irish girl's names. Every now and then I would give Kieran a list of names I kinda liked and they were pretty much vetoed quickly every time as not being "the perfect name". By the time the ultrasound got here, I had exhausted my resources. I had looked all over the internet and baby sites and just couldn't come up with anything new. 

After finding out she was a girl, I told Kieran "well, I guess you'll have to come up with a good middle name now!" We tossed around some names as we were driving home, a few random ones mixed in with some of my favorite names that had already been vetoed :-)  Then Kieran asked Caeden what he thought her middle name should be. He already knew her name was Alannah, we had been talking about that one for awhile. And you know how exotic 3 year old name ideas can get........ so I wasn't real sure what we were going to hear as his response! He said, "I think it should be Alannah Girl" - well, that wasn't as bad a Alannah Potato Chip or something! Kieran said, "well, what's the gaelic word for girl?", my first thought was "I think it's Colleen". So, after getting home I looked up Colleen and it does mean "girl". We tried Alannah Colleen - sounds okay.......... then I looked at the other variations of Colleen listed and one was "Cailin". This is actually the gaelic that Colleen comes from. Well, Alannah Cailin sounds pretty good too. But after saying it we realized Cailin sounds really close to Caeden and though it's the middle name and not the first, we weren't sure about it even though we really liked it. So, I looked up Cailin, one of the variations of Cailin is Caileen - basically a cross between Colleen and Cailin - still meaning girl or lass in the gaelic. Well, this sounded like a good compromise with the names, sounded nice with Alannah and has the meaning that Caeden picked.......... Alannah Caileen it is! 

"Alannah" means - dear child, precious, a term of endearment 'o child' in gaelic 

"Caileen" means - girl or lass in gaelic

 So, she's our "dear, precious girl"!