what's in a name?

we have officially chosen our sweet daughter's name.  so, without further hesitation, her name is:

mary isabelle

i have always been interested in name meanings.  in Hebrew, mary means "bitter" but mary obviously was also the mother of God.  isabelle is also Hebrew and means "My God is a vow."  

our mary isabelle is named after two of her great-grandmothers.  mary is after mamaw conkin (jay's dad's mother) and i find it is a great way to honor both of their memories.  isabelle is my mom's mother's middle name (she was martha isabelle).  she died at the age of 37 from breast cancer.  i love that we can honor both of these sweet women.

but how did we actually choose her name?  funny story... i had a list of 6 different combinations of about 4 names and gave them to jay.  he marked out three of them and gave me the list back after analyzing it a little and asked me to number them in order of favorite choice to my least favorite choice.  he then put the numbers in a hat and i picked one out.  i drew #2 first and jay decided he really didn't like it that much.  so then i shuffled the numbers around and he drew out #1- which was mary isabelle.  we have thought about it for a little over a week and have never thought about changing it.  we will probably just call her mary but i may try calling her both names.  we'll just have to wait and meet her and see what fits best!