A mama I did a private consultation for last spring emailed me to let me know what they ended up naming their daughter: Zita Fidela!
She writes,
“… we named her Zita Fidela (fee-DAY-lah). She was born April 24th, 2015 at 11:38am after a five hour labor, my first daytime baby. She weighed 7lbs9oz at birth. She’s a big girl now though, crawling all over and starting to eat food. Time flies. Zita is a super sweet baby and very much adored by our whole family. She is nearly always joyful and smiling.
How did we choose? My husband really wanted to name her Annalise. I think Annalise is a lovely name, but I didn’t like it with our last name, and Zita’s next oldest sister, only 18 months older, is Anastasia, which I felt was too similar to Annalise. We do call Anastasia, Tacy, but still…I was just not comfortable with Annalise. I had had Stella, Cecilia, Zita and Salette as top contenders, but I didn’t feel “right” about any of them. I wanted the name we chose to be just “right” as soon as I saw it. I wanted to be feel really comfortable and in love with the name, and I just wasn’t feeling it for any of those names. Then I was checking their popularity, and I found that Stella was in the top 100 last year. That killed it for me. I don’t like to do popular. (Yes, I know I have a kid named Sam…which I am okay with…but….). Then I remembered how we’d chosen our son Henry’s middle name, Gerard, as Henry was born on St Gerard’s feast day. I looked up the saint for the day, April 24, and it was St Fidelis of Sigmaringen. Read about him, he’s very cool. Remember how I wanted a name saint who was a strong champion for the faith? St Fidelis is your man. Fidelis for a girl would be Fidela, right, and then suddenly it came together. Zita Fidela. I had said whispered quite a few names to my little girl over the past few hours, listening to myself say them and wondering if they fit. When I said that one, I had that knowing feeling I had been waiting and hoping for. I texted it to my husband (at home with the other kids), hoping so hard, because I knew it was the one. And he liked it. We still had the “Are you sure? You’re really sure?” conversation the next morning when we filled out her birth certificate, but that was just because neither of us wanted to insist on a name the other didn’t want.
We are hopeless nicknamers, it seems, so we call her Little Z a lot. Also Zezu (zee-zoo) and most recently, Henry, age 5, christened her Tooch and it’s stuck a little.”
What a beautiful story!! Zita’s big sibs have the amazing names:
Maria Antonia
Henry Gerard Marie
Vincent Alexander Marie (Vinnie, Vin, Vince, Vincie)
Anastasia Evamarie (Tacy)
Samuel Quentin Marie (Sam, Sammy)
Beautiful, right? I haven’t heard Zita at all on today’s babies — Zita’s parents seem to have done the seemingly impossible in finding a truly unique but still saintly name! And Marie in each of the boys’ names! I love that so much!
Congratulations to the whole family, and happy birthday Baby Zita!!
Welcome Zita Fidela! Sacred Heart of Jesus, please bless you!
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Um, ohmigoodness!!!! All of this is just a YES! My confirmation name is Zita, and I’ve always loved it! I love seeing it used!!
Also, Marie for the boys? Like holy cow! So cool! I love it! All their names are so perfect, I would use each and everyone of them!
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I know!!!
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SO GREAT that your Confirmation name is Zita!!
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This is great! What a beautiful family of names!
I love that Anastasia is called Tacy—like the Betsy-Tacy stories which we LOVE at our house!
Also my niece’s middle name is Zita! (She is newly 6.) So it’s out there, but not much!
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I know, I love Tacy too, so sweet! Can you share your niece’s first name? I’d love to see what Zita’s paired with!
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That is why we chose it! And Tacy is even the Catholic one. :)I have always loved Betsy-Tacy and now I enjoy reading them aloud with my children. The only thing about it is other people seem to find it difficult to get when we make introductions. We have settled on saying “Like Stacy but without the ‘s'” and helps.
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Sooo wonderful! 🙂
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Servant of God Zita (Bl. Karl’s wife) is my favorite Zita!
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I haven’t heard about her — I’ll have to look her up!
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Our Zita is named for her, Theresa. 🙂
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Ah! I’ll see if I can find a pic of her to post on IG!
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Fixed! https://www.instagram.com/p/BAdTColOBxS/?taken-by=sanctanomina
So sorry EG, you’d told me about the empress connection too and I totally forgot when I was posting the pic of St. Zita!
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