Rose was my great-grandmother's name (and hence also my niece Rinnah's g-gm's name). It's also Joel's mom's middle name, which is a nice connection.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the rise of Rose as a middle name recently is due to the little girls having grandmothers or great-grandmothers with that as their first name!

(I admit a tiny bit of bias -- it is my mother's name!)

Interesting! One thing that also ended up winning me over to it was the fact that I knew no one in real life with that name (nor did Joel), and only two fictional characters (from The Importance of Being Earnest and Magic for Marigold (L.M. Montgomery)), which I realized was pretty unusual. So now I know, at least in a roundabout fashion, someone else with the name.