Naming a Miscarried Baby

It's a fairly common practice for parents to name the children they've lost to miscarriage. It's certainly a matter of personal preference (please do not feel that you aren't properly honoring your child or grieving appropriately if you decide not to name your child) but for many parents, it helps them connect with and find closure after the loss of their child. In many families, especially the Catholic families I'm familiar with, miscarried children are talked about often, prayed for (and to, since we have reason to believe that they are in heaven and therefore can watch out and pray for us), and it's easier to do these things if the children have names. I previously wrote about how we chose a name for our daughter and for the first two children we lost and I've decided to share an update of that post with the names of the last two children I miscarried.

I've always been a bit of a name junky (I'm currently addicted to the Catholic naming blog Sancta Nomina) so the process of choosing our children's names is one that is done with a lot of thought, prayer, and love. It meant so much to me that even though we lost four of our children so very young and will never get to experience the typical parenting moments with them as we will with our living child, I was still able to give them their names. It is one of the only ways that I've been able to truly mother those babies.

Lucia Rose, born December 2011

Since we didn't find out whether Lucia was a boy or girl, we had to have two names at the ready.  The boy's name was picked out before we were even pregnant (and in some ways before I even met my husband).  The girl's name was much harder to nail down since it seemed David and I had opposite taste in names.  (We have since resolved our differences and have 3-4 girls names already picked out, in order, for future daughters.) My main choice for name inspiration was a book of women Saints that I owned.  I would thumb through the pages looking for names that I liked and only read the corresponding story if I felt the name was "in the running".  There were several names that were clearly not going to happen, like Hedwig and Hildegarde, but anything I half liked I ran by David and 99% he turned down on the spot.  Very early on, two front runners emerged: Alena and Lucia.  Alena was actually the favorite for quite some time and I can't remember why we decided on Lucia instead, but we did so somewhere between 20 and 30 weeks.  Lucia's name is equally in honor of St. Lucy and Sr. Lucia of Fatima as my husband has a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima.  Her middle name, Rose, was decided from the very beginning.  It is my middle name and a dear aunt's middle name in honor of my great grandmother, Rosa. 

Francis Michael, miscarried October 2013

After my miscarriage in October 2013, several people urged us to name the baby.  It took a week or so before we felt comfortable with doing so.  Naming a miscarried child seemed so different than naming a living one.  We had names picked out for our next child before this one was even conceived, but it didn't feel right to use either one of them.  I know many parents feel comfortable giving the child a gender specific name based on their gut instincts, but I didn't have any feelings about the baby's gender and was wrong with my gut instinct that Lucia was a boy, so we decided to choose a gender neutral name.  Searching "gender neutral Saint names" doesn't come up with many results, but I immediately found one that I loved: Francis.  Although more commonly associated with boys, Frances is a common enough girl's name and St. Frances Cabrini is one of my favorite Saints.  The biggest decision we had to make was which spelling to use.  While researching the name, I found a source that said that until the last few centuries, both spellings were used interchangeably for boys and girls, so we simply went with the one that was most aesthetically appealing to me.  We chose the middle name Michael after the Archangel.  When I think of this baby, I think of the baby being either "my Frank or Frannie" and joyfully look forward to the day when I find out which nickname fits.

Julian Gabriel, miscarried February 2014

This may sound a bit strange, but I already chosen a name for our second miscarried child before I was even pregnant with him/her.  It was a gender neutral name that would only be used for another lost baby.  Not that I necessarily expected to miscarry again (and I truly did not think I would miscarry twice in a row) but it was a name that I came across when I was looking for a name for Francis and tucked away as another favorite.  It feels a bit odd to give a child a specific name because he/she passed before birth while we would have given that same child a different name had he/she been born.  But at the same time, we feel blessed to be able to do the only thing we can do to parent this child other than conception: name him/her.  We chose the name Julian Gabriel.  Julian, while usually considered masculine, is the name of many Catholic Saints, and the female Julian of Norwich (who though not canonized is often revered as a Saint).  Gabriel, like the middle name we chose for Francis, is in honor of the Archangel.

Adrienne Rafael, miscarried October 2014
Like with Julian, I also had some ideas in mind of names to use if I miscarried again before I even knew this little one existed. I suppose after two miscarriages and one live birth, it starts to feel like a loss is more likely (statistically, it's not). Our third miscarriage was a very early "chemical pregnancy" so we weren't sure I was even pregnant until I no longer was. We debated a little bit about whether we would name the baby or whether we would even count it as a pregnancy/loss but ultimately decided that our belief that life starts at conception meant we wouldn't treat this child any different than we did the babies we lost later on. I started to feel like we were running out of blatantly Catholic, gender neutral names, but I had a short list left and Adrian was on it. Since Francis and Julian are more masculine in appearance, we decided on the feminine spelling Adrienne. Again, Rafael is for the Archangel and we chose that spelling because I love the Spanish language and prefer the pronunciation (rah-fiy-EHL) that is similar to the Spanish.

Christian Michael, miscarried December 2014
After we lost our last baby, I had a hard time coming up with any name ideas. There are some more available that fit the Saint/biblical and gender neutral categories (see below) but I couldn't seem to find one that fit for our baby. I don't know why I initially thought of Christian, but once I did, it just seemed right. Although usually a boy's name, I worked with a girl named Christian in college so it has a very gender neutral feel to me. We were short-sighted (or maybe it was just wishful thinking) when we decided to use the names of the Archangels as middle names for our miscarried babies since there are only three named Archangels. It didn't feel right to break with the tradition, so we decided to cycle back through and used Michael again.




A few of the ideas that we didn't use (yet) but might be helpful for couples searching for gender neutral Catholic names: 

Jean - in English, it's a girl's name; in French, it's the male name John
Jordan - for the Jordan River
Valentine
Alex - for Alexander or Alexandra, or you could maybe even the full name Alexis - I'm familiar with it as a girl's name, but apparently it's a boy's name too
Hilary - for the male St. Hilary, though it's more often a female name now
Karol/Carol - for St. John Paul II whose name was Karol Wojtyla
Aaron/Erin/Aeron
Andy - for Andrew or Andrea - or even the full Andrea since it is a boy's name in other cultures, like singer Andrea Bocelli
Remy
Quinn - for Ven. Edel Quinn
Noel - means "Christmas" in French
Jude
Ariel - one of names for Jerusalem, probably most well known as The Little Mermaid, it can also be a boy's name like Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon

For more ideas, see Kate's post at Sancta Nomina. If none of these names work for you, (affiliate link) The Catholic Baby Name Book may be another helpful resource. If you have any other ideas, please leave them in the comments and I'd be happy to add them to the list!