Nora or Nova

Hi everyone,

We're having second thoughts about the name we've chosen for our daughter who is on the way.

We actually agreed on a boy's name and a girl's name pretty early on in the pregnancy.

For a girl, both Nora and Nova were high on our list.
We liked Nora better because it contained letters from both of our own first names. That wasn't the case with Nova. We applied that same logic to our boy's name choice, putting it at number 1. We wanted a name that had a letter combination derived from both my first name and my husband's.

We've known for a while now that it's going to be a girl. So our top choice was Nora. Done!

Now comes my big "doubt point". I'm not really a fan of "popular names". Not that they aren't beautiful, sweet, hip, or nice. But I worked in childcare for years. And I never liked it when there was Lisa 1, Lisa 2, and Lisa 3. Or Thijs G, Thijs L, and Thijs dV.

A bit more originality is fine. And we already have a very common surname like De Vries, De Groot, etc.

Then this spring the SVB list came out with the most popular names.
In 2013, the name Nora was ranked 33rd, given 326 times. I already found that quite popular, but luckily not in the top 20.

Now in 2014, Nora suddenly jumped to rank 22, given 421 times that year. (Noa is at 20 and Noor at 28, which seems similar too). The name Nova is at rank 41, given 279 times.

We've been to many places lately where birth announcements are hanging – at the midwife's, at the hospital in our own town for the nuchal translucency scan, and at the hospital a bit further away for the 20-week ultrasound. And there's always a birth announcement with the name "Nora" hanging there.

I find this a shame. In my opinion, the name is too popular. But we still really liked this name. Period.

We've also been calling her that for a while now (just between us). Today I saw on a site about birth announcements that the name "Nora" was used everywhere as an example card. And I came across the name Nova in a brochure.

I said to my husband, I actually think Nova is quite beautiful too. He said yes, I do too. Maybe even more beautiful than Nora. More original, sweet, and strong, yet with the same sound.

But well, then our whole reasoning about letters from our own names goes out the window ha ha. Because neither my husband nor I have a V in our first names.

So that "rule" wouldn't apply anymore for a potential future brother or sister either.

Okay, a very long story. But what do you think?
Nora or Nova. And why?

xx JTDG