What's in a name?

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet... - Romeo & Juliet 2.2

...but not our Zoë - we think she already fits her beautiful name perfectly. I have been meaning to write about this forever, but am just getting to it now!

Zoë Winter. There is a good story behind her name.

Zoë:
This was Tom's pick. It's a name I never would have chosen but love completely. He is a fan of J.D. Salinger and liked Zooey from Franny & Zooey. He also loved the fact that her name would start with a "Z" - not many people can say that. I loved it even more when I learned that in Greek it means "Woman full of life." I was happy with it but didn't want to spell it with a "y" because I feared people would call her Zoo-y. We then had to think about the umlaut (the 2 dots over the "e"). When we learned that phonetically, without the umlaut it would be Zoe (as in Snow), as an English teacher I could not allow my child to have a name that is spelled differently from its phonetic pronunciation. And thus, we arrived at Zoë!

Winter:
This is the more sentimental name. Our next door neighbor / grandfather figure at Lake George was Winter Horton. I (Heidi) have known and loved him since I was about 5 years old. He was always loving and supportive of me and interested in my life regardless of my age. He was funny, thoughtful, and passionate about his family, politics, and his wooden boats. When Tom came into my life, Winter was supportive and immediately loving towards him as well. As a result, we both adored him. One week after I found out I was pregnant with Zoë we learned that Winter had died. We probably would have used his name regardless, but it felt even more fitting as a result. Below is a picture of Winter with his wife, Carol - she died 52 days after he died; they were married for 52 years (I think that's the right number... I may be off by one or two).
We are so excited to know that Zoë will carry Winter's name with her wherever she goes -- we cannot imagine a more fitting way to honor him than to give our Zoë, "Woman Full of Life," his name, too.