Hi everyone! This is just some very self-indulgent domestic fluff. I'm a bit of a "name nerd" in that I love to learn about the history and meaning of names, how parents decide on them, how cultural and historical contexts come into play, etc. I started thinking about how Maria and Georg might have named their first child and this story popped out. I hope you enjoy!

All the clichés were true. Maria's baby really was perfect.

Her little grasping fingers were perfect. Her blue eyes, already so attentive and intelligent as Georg's, were perfect. Her golden haze of hair was perfect.

Many people had told Maria that the love she would feel for her child would be different than anything she had felt before. She hadn't disbelieved them, but she couldn't conceptualize it either. But now the baby was here. A real, living, breathing, feeling person that she and Georg had created together. And she was, truly, perfect.

The only problem? She still didn't have a name.

Maria sighed and looked down at her daughter, who was dozing in her arms as they sat in a rocking chair out on the front porch. The setting sun cast their little farm in a peachy glow. She could see Marta and Gretl gathering apples from the orchard, while a delicious smell – beef stew, maybe? – drifted from the kitchen. Maria hadn't wanted to give up her normal routines, including cooking for her family, but as her pregnancy wound down, her feet swelled, and her belly grew bigger than she thought possible, she found herself so fatigued that Georg insisted that he or Liesl would be in charge of meals from then on, and Maria could help if she really felt up to it. At the moment, Liesl was directing Brigitta and Louisa in the kitchen while the boys helped their father put hay in the fields for the cows and rounded up the goats and chickens.

This new life hadn't been an easy adjustment. The farming part was easier for Maria than anyone else, since she, a mountain girl-turned-postulant, was used to finicky animals and endless chores. But her family of aristocrats (a term Georg sniffed at but couldn't deny) had risen admirably to the challenge, especially her husband, who had always been a working man at heart. It had been difficult and exciting and stressful and magical in many ways, but mostly very, very busy. And maybe that's how they made it all this way – a whole week after the baby's birth – without deciding on a name.

She and Georg were both embarrassed about it. It wasn't as if they didn't try. They had debated what seemed like every name ever invented, as only two stubborn, opinionated people can. Though there were several they liked, none seemed like "the one" – and how could they give their daughter a name that was just fine but not as perfect as she would be?

To their credit, they did choose a boy name. Not because a girl was any less wanted, but Maria found herself more picky about girls' names because she just had a feeling that she would have a daughter. Their job was made four times harder by the fact that Georg and his children all had three middle names each, which was common for people of his station in Austria. They may not be nobility in America, but it didn't feel right to break the tradition with Georg's eighth child. Luckily, finding the middle names turned out to be easy. Now the first and most important was the only one left.

"Maria." She whispered the baby's first middle name, stroking the light hair that reminded her of her own. Liesl's first middle name was Agathe after her birth mother and Friederich's was Georg, so it made sense to continue the pattern. Plus, as Georg had purred to her one night, "Maria is the most beautiful name in the world."

"Augusta," she continued. Augusta was the name of Maria's own mother. She had died when Maria was a small child, but she remembered her as the kind of loving, joyful parent she hoped to be.

"Maximiliane," she finished, her voice catching a little.

She had approached Georg early on about naming the baby after Max Detweiler, knowing he wouldn't want to pressure her by suggesting it himself. Maria would not have needed any convincing. Without Max, their flight from Austria and the birth of this child may never have happened. They tried calling the future baby "Max" or "Maximiliane" for a while, but using it as a first name was too painful a reminder that they hadn't heard from Max in the two years since the Anschluss. Sending him word from America would be too great a risk to his safety, knowing that the Nazis monitored the mail. He had told Georg he would leave Austria himself when it wouldn't look suspicious, then he would get in touch through Georg's in-laws. She could only hope that he was still just biding his time.

Max did inspire their choice of first name for a boy – Richard was Max's middle name and one both she and Georg could agree on. But they didn't love the feminine form, Ricarda, so no progress was made there.

Part of what made the decision so hard was that Georg had already used up all the family names he liked on his seven oldest children, while Maria had little family to speak of. He often thought her ideas, like Sara, were too plain, while she thought his, like Mathilde, weren't plain enough. He wanted the name to be very Austrian, and though Maria also wanted a name that wouldn't be out of place there, she thought it was more important that it be easy to pronounce in English. After all, Georg was getting tired of being called "George" and Friederich of being called "Frederick." That still left a solid list, from Ada to Barbara to Flora, but nothing seemed just right.

Current events didn't help matters at all. One of Maria's top picks had been Emma, with the nickname Emmy. She thought it was an adorable name for a little girl but also lovely for a grown woman. Georg said he liked it at first, but something seemed to be bothering him later. He tried to tell her he was being foolish, but she finally got it out of him – Emma "Emmy" Göring was the wife of German air force chief Hermann Göring, and the press sometimes called her the unofficial First Lady of Nazi Germany since Hitler was a bachelor. Maria had argued that no one would see a connection, especially not in America. But after that, she couldn't hear the name Emma or Emmy without thinking of Frau Göring.

The children had helped as best they could. She had to gently turn down Gretl's suggestions of Snowflake and Satin since they were some of Maria's favorite things. Friederich and Kurt thought coming up with girls' names would jinx their hopes for a boy, but Kurt did offer Lois from an American comic he was obsessed with. "They said they wanted it to be Austrian, and that's an ugly name, anyway," Louisa had sniped. "I guess your name's ugly too, 'cause they're basically the same!" Kurt had fired back, setting off a row that gave their parents a massive headache but no new ideas.

Between the opinions of Georg and the children, the demands of farm life, the homesickness for Salzburg, and the emotional and physical rollercoaster of pregnancy, Maria was too frazzled by the end to figure out what to wear most days, much less choose a name for a potential daughter. One night, when Georg found her looking for names by running a finger through the Bible with tears in her eyes, he kissed her and said, "This is your very first child, my love. Your thoughts are the most important. I promise I'll support you, whatever you decide."

And then the baby was here, and it was a girl just as she'd suspected, and the decision still hadn't been made, and Maria felt so guilty. But the doctor was sympathetic. "You're not the first, and you won't be the last," he said. "I'm sure it will be easier now that she's here and you can get a sense of who she is. You have up to six months to settle on one."

"I won't let it take six months," she cooed to the sleeping bundle. "We'll have you named in no time."

She'd taken a break from thinking about names since she gave birth. She had experienced two years of motherhood already, but being the mother of a newborn was entirely different. The last time she'd been this sleep-deprived, she had been fleeing from Nazis across a mountain range. But moments like this – the baby snuggled up against her, her tiny face so relaxed, like she knew Maria's arms were the safest place in the world – were what she had dreamed of since marrying Georg. Now that her new reality was settling in, it was time to pick a name for good.

"Are you a Flora? A Lena, maybe?" Both pretty names, but she couldn't quite attach them to her daughter. Maria sighed. She was still overthinking it. How difficult could it really be?

Footsteps pounded on the porch stairs, and she looked up to see her boys, shiny with sweat but smiling.

"Hello, Mother," Friederich said as they walked up to her. "And hello, baby," he added in a softer voice.

He and Kurt paused to look at the baby for a moment. Their disappointment at another sister had vanished as soon as they saw her, if it was ever that serious to begin with.

"I still think she looks like a Lois," Kurt said.

Friederich groaned. "For the last time, they're not naming her after Superman's girlfriend –"

"I'm joking –"

"Alright boys, she is sleeping," Maria cut in, keeping her voice low. "Go wash up for dinner, and I'll be in soon. Where's your father?"

"He said he had a surprise for you," Friederich replied.

"Oh?" They hadn't had much time for surprises lately. What was her husband up to?

The boys headed inside, and Georg came up the stairs a few minutes later. She immediately noticed that his hands were behind his back.

"What do you have there?" She quietly called to him.

He strode up to her with a half-smile. He was so handsome like this, she thought, his hair tousled, his sleeves rolled up, and sweat gleaming on his collarbone. More than two years of marriage, and he still gave her butterflies. Georg knelt beside her rocking chair and presented a bundle of blush-pink roses.

"Roses for my lady," he whispered. "For both my ladies."

"Oh, Georg," she breathed, trying to contain the sudden rush of emotion. God, she loved him.

Rose bushes had been planted in front of the farmhouse before they'd moved in – long before, judging by the state of them. Unpruned and nearly overrun by weeds, it probably would have been easier to rip them all out and start over, but Maria wasn't one to back down from a challenge. She had faint but fond memories of following her mother around a vegetable garden, and gardening had been her favorite of the abbey chores. There was just something energizing about the sun on her back and dirt under her fingernails. So after the most pressing projects had been finished, she set to work on the rose bushes. Georg would often join her when he had a chance, and they would work together to make their new home just a little more beautiful.

The roses had started to bloom during her last month of pregnancy, so she already knew how well they had turned out. But they looked especially lovely in her husband's hands. It must have taken quite some time to clip them and carefully trim away every thorn.

"I thought we could put them in a vase on the kitchen table." He handed her a rose, eyes searching her face. "How are you feeling?"

"Wonderful," she answered. "Tired. But wonderful."

She lowered the flower beside the baby's sleeping face and grinned at how closely the pink of the rose resembled the pink of her daughter's lips – and then she paused.

Rosa. That had been one of the names on their "maybe" list. It was pretty; it could be Austrian or American, but was it the one? Like with every other name, they hadn't been able to decide. Now, though, Maria looked at her baby and thought Rosa and had a feeling like when a wireless radio finally catches a signal.

"Georg," she said slowly. "What do you think about Rosa?"

"Rosa," he repeated.

They both soaked it in for a moment. Maria would always consider edelweiss "their" flower, but tending the roses with Georg had made for some of the best early memories in this house. She looked at the rose and at the baby and saw in both of them that everything had changed, but the most important thing hadn't – the love that had built this child and this home and would sustain this unfamiliar but promising new future.

"Rosa," she whispered, and the baby opened her eyes. She yawned and wriggled, then blinked cannily at her parents.

"Look at that!" Georg said. "She responded like it was already her name."

"She looks like she's wondering what took us so long." Maria faced him. "You really do like 'Rosa,' darling?"

"I do. I really do. I think it sounds lovely and strong and clever. I can already tell she'll be all those things." He pressed a kiss to the top of Maria's head. "Just like her mother."

She smiled. "Somehow, I have a feeling she'll be as headstrong as her father."

"God help us if that's the case…"

She laughed and held out a finger for the baby – Rosa – to grab, since she had started reaching for Maria. "Rosa Maria Augusta Maximiliane von Trapp," she murmured. There was that feeling again, the wireless catching the signal. Relief floated down on her. They'd finally done it. She should've known they were already close to the answer; they only needed to meet Rosa to know it.

"I love the name." Georg brought his hand to her jaw and gently turned her face toward his. "And I love you."

"I love you too, darling."

They moved as one into a soft kiss. She inhaled the scent of roses and her husband, and she felt impossibly lucky despite all the turmoil of the last couple years. Rosa may never know Austria nor edelweiss nor the Alps, but she would know the mountains of Vermont, the love of two parents and seven siblings, and the revived rose bushes that had given her her name.

"Dinner's ready!" Liesl called from inside the house.

Georg gave Maria one last peck and smiled, eyes twinkling. "Let's head in, Mrs. von Trapp. I believe we have some very welcome news to share with the children."

And now for some nerding about the names in this story!

The real Georg and Maria's first child was named Rosemarie, so I wanted to reference that without actually using Rosemarie since none of the other kiddos have the same name as their real-life counterparts. I also don't really see the movie versions of G and M naming their child Rosemarie – it's a pretty name, but I just don't think it's their style. So that's how I ended up with Rosa.

The real Maria's mother was named Augusta Kutschera, and the real von Trapps did have three middle names each!

I made Uncle Max's middle name Richard in honor of Richard Haydn, who played Max in the film.

For English speakers, Maxine is probably the most common feminine name that starts with "Max," but Maximiliane is more common in German (according to the website Behind the Name, anyway).

If you enjoyed this, feel free to check out my other Maria/Georg-centric stories: Boxed Memories, The Angels Drowned, and Basorexia. To read more about the von Trapps in America, check out Ten Years Gone and baby, you're on the brink.

Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you thought! :)