Little Known Fact #2

Q: Where the heck did the name “Chiara” come from? A: Coming up with a name was not easy for us. In spite of our attempts to have other people to name her for us (see the prize-laden contest at benandsharla.blogspot.com) we found ourselves three months into the pregnancy with no agreement. After a few more of our “discussions”, I started offering more unusual names in hopes of tricking Sharla out of her three vetoes. Everything went according to plan with “Zoltan” and “Gertrude”. But to my surprise, Sharla actually liked “Coco”. For the next several months we jokingly used Coco as the baby’s working name while we looked for something more sophisticated. Enough repetition, however, makes a child’s name her own. We soon found ourselves looking for names that would be a pretext for her nickname Coco. We considered, Kokanee, Kokomo, Coquihalla and even Pebbles (“cocoa”, not “fruity”). But in the end, it was “Chiara Nicole” that won us over. Chiara (key-ah’-ra) is an Italian name meaning light. The middle name Nicole just seemed to marry Chiara to Wilcox. Someday we hope she’ll like art enough to recognize the allusion to chiaroscuro. Until then we’ll keep calling her Coco.