How did our sweet girl get her name? And what does it mean? We’ll tell you!
First off, it is important to know that we did not agree on a single boy name. Not a one. And Lola was the only girl name we both liked. So when we officially found out Baby Butters was a girl, she was pretty much already named. It became absolutely official when Andrew created a cute baby announcement with Lola on it and posted it to Facebook to show me. Secret was out, and now the world knew our baby name — oops!
But where did the name Lola come from? I have always loved family names or names with meaning. When I was little my Grandma Arrington used to always comment on how Shani had my Great Grandma Lola’s nose, and the name always stuck with me. When I brought up the name to Andrew, he immediately liked the idea due to a cute little girl he used to coach at AfterCool Fitness being named the same. No other names were really sticking, so once I heard from my mom and aunts how wonderful of a person their Grandma Lola was, it was a done deal.
Fun fact: My Aunt Net (Jeanette) is also named after Lola, as her full name was “Lola Jeanetta”.
Now finding a middle name was a bit trickier. Again, I was pretty set on finding either a family name or something that had significant meaning. We went through dozens of options, but nothing really took. A short while into our hunt Andrew suggested Moonstone because it is one of June’s birthstones (at this time we expected Lola to be a June baby). I wasn’t a fan of the stone part, but we kept Moon on our list. Around the same time, my sister came up with Elliot in honor of the place Andrew and I met (Mesquite High School on Elliot road). We didn’t love the flow of it paired with Lola, but the meaning was great.
As we got closer to Lola’s arrival, I started looking into significant events from our relationship in order to try and find some additional name options. What we consider our first date (and where we had our first kiss) was the 2007 movie Halloween. I looked up the names of everyone who worked on the movie, and found that the director’s wife (who was also a small part in the movie) was named Sheri Moon Zombie.
After finding the above connection, I proceeded to look up other meanings attached to “moon”, feeling like this was a sign. In doing so, I found the metonic cycle. It is defined by Dictionary.com as, “a period of 19 years (235 lunar months), after which the new and full moons return to the same days of the year. It was the basis of the ancient Greek calendar and is still used for calculating movable feasts such as Easter.” I attached quickly to the 19 due to September 19, 2007 being the date Andrew asked me to be his girlfriend. And as I’m writing this, I realize Lola had her Butters family baby shower at an Easter celebration. I love connections!
At this point we were about 90% sure Lola’s middle name would be Moon. However, we were planning to go into her birth open to other ideas. Instead, the universe played even more into the Moon plan by pushing our induction date because of the full moon. According to the nurses, full moons cause the labor and delivery unit to overflow!
Once Lola was finally here, we figured there were too many moon connections to let the name go. She is officially our Lola Moon.
meet the butters 