A rose by any other name…

A conversation with my mom the other day reminded me that I had written this post (according to blogger I wrote it on June 19!) and never posted it.  I postponed posting it because I meant to go back and add a bunch of beautiful Kiera photos.  I have a lot of beautiful photos of this beautiful little girl.  But I never did.  So instead, I'm just going to add one photo, and finally post it.  Because better that it get posted with just one photo, than not posted at all.

A couple of days after Kiera was born, Deenesh turned to me and asaid “Did you know that Keira Knightly spells her name with an E-I?”

No.  No I did not know that.

I had done a fair bit of research on different spellings of the name.

Kira – In the US in 2010, was ranked 308^th most common for girl’s name at about 250 girls with that name per million births.

Kyra - In the US in 2010, was ranked 349^th most common for girl’s name at about 220 girls with that name per million births.

Kiera * - In the US in 2010, was ranked 418^th most common for girl’s name at about 190 girls with that name per million births.

It never occurred to me to check “ei”.   I guess it’s the whole “I before E except after C, and in words like “weigh”  and “neighbor”” thing.

Kiera does not sound like “weigh or neighbor.”

It turns out that Keira (with an E-I) is the most common spelling.

Keira - In the US in 2010, was ranked 166^th most common for girl’s name at about 460 girls with that name per million births.

And this doesn’t even include the more traditional Gaelic spellings – Ciara and Ciera. 

Our goal with the name (similar to Asher’s) was a name that wasn’t too common, was easy to pronounce and easy to spell.

Turns out it is a more common name than we thought.

And my own father appears to have difficulty pronouncing it.  Along with the folks in the pediatricians office.

And there are several different spellings.  And we managed to choose the least common spelling.**

Oh well, I guess we can just console ourselves with the fact that it is a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.

*(My book club was the one that thought that “I –E” was the best spelling, they thought “Kira” and “Kyra” would result in people mispronouncing it “KI-RA”  Hmmmm...but maybe they actually said E-I.)

** As a bonus, in my sleep deprived haze, I’m pretty sure I wrote my own daughter’s name as “Keira” on a card recently.  Great.   Not even I can spell it right.