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Madeleine Corée Marshall née Chauvin

Coming up with the name:

Madeleine's name had to reflect three major ethnic influences.  She gets French Canadian from her mother, American from her father and Korean from her country of birth.  We felt that her name had to reflect all three.

We needed a first name that was both French and English and was beautiful in both, too.  We considered many names and all were rejected for one reason or another. Madeleine was the first name that we both immediately loved.  And we never could agree on a boy's name (I liked Tex and Austin... guess where I'm from)  so it is a good thing that Madeleine is a girl, or we still might not have named her.

Meaning of the name:

Madeleine is a derivative of Magdalene, you know as in Mary Magdalene.  The strong Biblical link of the name makes it popular in French Canadian families and not surprisingly Jo has a maternal aunt and a great paternal aunt by the name. 

Corée is her middle name and it is our bow to Korea.  Corée is Korea in French.  It should be pronounced cor-ay. It also sounds nice.

This particular branch of the Marshalls are from Appalachia.  If you're interested, we are developing a genealogy page for more information about her family background.  

Chauvin is an old French name.  Jo's ancestors were among the very first to settle New France in Jacques Cartier's days. I begged Josée to allow us to follow French Catholic tradition and officially include it as part of Madeleine's name, but Jo refused.  She actually thinks a baby can have too many names. The name 'Chauvin' of course gave us chauvinism, but that does not reflect on her family in any way whatsoever (unless Nicholas Chauvin was a long lost ancestor)!

Her nicknames

Nessie
We started to call her Nessie while she was in the womb.  She had the habit of stretching and pushing up into Jo's abdomen creating a kind of crest.  One day I felt her rise and then fall and it reminded me of the Loch Ness Monster cresting above the water and then submerging again.

Cricket
The Korean hospital staff were always remarking on how long Madeleine's legs were!  Sonograms are used to estimate the gestational age of a baby.  They measure three things: diameter of the head, diameter of the abdomen and the length of the femur. 

This lead to the idea of calling her Cricket and gave rise to her Korean name: Gwee-ddo-ra-mee.  I'll give you the Korean, but you probably won't be able to see it unless you've installed the Korean character set on your computer: 귀뚜라미.

Unfortunately, gwee-do-ra-mee is not considered a cute name unlike cricket is in English.  Koreans think that frog (gae-goo-ree, Korean: 개구리) is cuter and more suitable.  So what can you do?