The Meaning Behind Our Daughter's Name

This blog post is especially important to us. I look forward to showing our daughter this post when she is older and explain how much thought went into her name. Mark and I have thought about our baby’s name for a long time now. I think we started about...oh, since the day we met 14 years ago hahaha 

Just Kidding! It has been for a long time though...

We pretty much had the same names for that entire time. Then, we got pregnant and it all changed. The name for a boy that we had picked out didn’t work for us anymore. We have a new name picked out and so if we have a little boy one day, he is all set! The girl’s name we had picked out was still a leading contender until we started saying this name and fell in love with it. We wanted a name that was timeless and elegant. We also wanted our daughter to be respected and have all the opportunities she wanted when this name was read on a resume or on an application one day.


Her first name makes me think of growing up at St. Anthony School, a Catholic school in Ft. Lauderdale that I attended from Pre-K until I left to attend their sister school,  St. Thomas Aquinas for high school. 

St. Anthony School

The original look of St. Anthony church in the 1920's.

St. Anthony Catholic Church Present Day.

Broward County's first Catholic Church had a celebration on Nov. 4th-5th, 2011 to mark 90 years since the establishment of the parish and 85 years since the establishment of the of the school. 
Our daughter's due date is Nov. 7th, my birthday is Nov. 5th, and my mother's birthday is Nov. 1st. As you can see the beginning of November is special to us!)

Once a week the entire school attended morning Mass before classes started. My favorite mass was always The May Crowning. At this Mass, we would lay a crown of roses atop the statue of the Mother Mary that sits to the right of Jesus Christ at the front of the church.  The church is dimly lit with candles and low lighting while the choir sings "Ave Maria." Maria is my mother's name and my middle name. Ave Maria is such a beautiful song. Before finding out that Mark's uncle unfortunately could not attend our wedding, I was going to ask him to sing "Ave Maria" as I walked down the aisle with my father.  His uncle, Gregory Lorenz, is an opera singer that has appeared in the Metropolitan Opera, The New York Philharmonic, Opera Camerata of Washington, etc.  


So our baby's first name makes me thinks of my amazing mother and the very small and beautiful Catholic school that I attended for 10 years. Many of the  friends I made there are still friends and more like my siblings.  


Here is Andrea Bocelli (a favorite of mine singing this beautiful song.)

For her middle name, we decided to add a family name. Mark’s mother married his step father when Mark was very young and days after that, they moved from North Dakota to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida so that his step father, Timothy Lorenz, could practice anesthesiology in South Florida. Mark's step father, who raised him, his mother, and his two little brothers all share this last name.  Tim is the reason that Debbie and Mark moved to Florida in the first place. Without the move, I probably would have never met Mark and our entire lives would have been completely different. For that reason, we decided to have their family name, Lorenz, represented in her name. 


And, of course, her last name will be our last name, McGuire. 
 I am so happy that all three names represent or make us think of our three families and special times in our lives.  




With all that said, we are excited to reveal that our little girl's name is:

Ava Loren McGuire

Half way there!  Ava's Due Date is November 7th!
She will be the best birthday present I could ever imagine.