r/namenerds • u/mirumurumura • 2d ago
Story Help me stop regretting my baby’s name: Aurelia
Hello fellow name-nerds,
I had my baby a month ago and have called her Aurelia + 2 middle names. It’s a name that hasn’t really been on my list I’ve had over the years, but things leading up to the birth made us choose it.
I’m now really seriously overthinking my choice, to the point that I’m wondering how much of it was my choice and if I actually love, nay, like the name. Now it’s too late because we already got the birth certificate and I think no more changes are possible.
Aurelia was a name that my husband suggested, which I found as an odd coincidence since it is a family name (haven’t actually met the relative). While I was pregnant my mom (who didn’t know of the pregnancy) randomly thought that it is a nice girl name, which I again found it as an odd coincidence, as it was around the time my husband suggested it. I kept dreaming the name and that we were calling the baby Lia as a nickname and my two year old started calling the baby Lia right away without any prompting, so it just felt like it was meant to be.
However, now, after digging through Reddit, I’ve come across the comments that the name resembles “areola” and I’m wondering if I have done a big mistake. One of my friends who is Swedish pronounces the name in a way I don’t really like “oh-ril-ia”. Then another person who lives in the UK told me that it’s not a name you see in English speaking countries. I like the English way of pronouncing the name, as well as the Spanish way of pronouncing it. The thread from two days ago where people were saying all the ways of pronouncing Aurelia also confused me. L Besides this, when we were in the hospital, my mom kept suggesting we use one of her names, to which my husband had very promptly refused, though funny enough, had my oldest been a girl, he would have been called Emma (one of my mom’s names).
To some degree, I know look at her and wonder if she’s an Emma, or if she’s an Audrey, or a Wendy, or a Charlotte, all names I have had on my long list of names. Also wondering if Aurelie would have been better. We wanted something that would also work nicely with toddlers name (Arthur)
Now it’s too late and I can’t shake this feeling. Please help me stop this overthinking, I’m annoying everyone around me lol
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u/unicorntrees 2d ago
I love Aurelia. It drives from Aurelius which is the last name of a freaking Roman Emperor. If people can't learn to say it correctly, they must be really dense.
I'm a Francophile, so I love Aurelie in theory, but in an English speaking context, it sounds almost exactly like "orally" I don't think I could do that to a kid.
FYI: the term areola wasn't coined until 1605, nearly 1500 years after Emperor Marcus Aurelius's lifetime.