What's in a name?

Bella is playing contentedly on the floor with her blocks. Dave calls her name and she looks up. See? She knows her name!


He's been trying to convince me of this for a few days now and I'm skeptical, certain that she's responding to the voice and not the word. It's too early for her to know her name, too early for her to pick meaning out of the necklace of words we throw at her day to day.

So I try out some variations. Squishy Butt, I call in my sweetest most singsongy voice. Butter Ball... Isabelle. And she turns to me at the last one. I try out a few more, and she thinks this new game is great. She slips up at Peanut Butter, but in her defense, I do call her Peanut quite a bit. To rub it in even more that this grand feat is yesterday's news, I'm sitting behind her and each time she hears her name, she looks up, swivels herself expertly around without faltering and looks up at me expectantly.



When did this happen? I barely even use her full name, and here she is hanging on every syllable, finding meaning in random consonants. The implications are still sinking in to me. Six months ago we were one, and now she's already setting the stones of her own identity, all on her own. I hope this means we picked the right name.