What's In A Name?

Choosing a name of a child is one of those decisions that lasts a lifetime. Joel and I spent a long time trying to figure out the right name for this baby. We still had the boy's name that we had chosen with Sophia but needed another girl's name.
Hannah - Before we had kids we never really talked about what we would name our kids or even how many kids we would want to ideally have. There was one night that out of the blue we were talking and one of us said, "If we ever have a baby girl we should name her, Grace." So that was the name we had chosen, but it was not to be the name of our baby. Instead Joel's sister and brother in law (unaware of Joel and my conversation) decided to name their baby girl, Grace. Their daughter truly was a graceful gift from God who arrived after Joel's sister fought her battle against cancer.
So as we thought about names for this baby one of the names Joel came up with early on was Karis (which is Greek for Grace). I was not to sure about it but it was starting to grow on me. So we looked and looked for other names trying this one and that one. But I wanted the name to be significant and not just something that sounded good. Well, it turns out that Hannah means Grace in Hebrew. So we do have a daughter who is our graceful gift from God as well.
Rose - The name Rose is a family name in both our families. Joel's grandmother was RosaLee Doerfler. We chose to give Hannah and Sophia the same middle name because it is a "tradition" in my family. My sisters and I all have the same middle name "Jean." So I wanted to carry on this tradition if we had two girls.
Hannah Rose Pancoast - the perfect name.