Bella or Eloise?

[Hope88]

Is Bella usually as a nn only? Does anyone have Bella? Shall I use Isabella officially instead?
Would Eloise be called Ellie?
Which one do you prefer?

Eloise

I love Eloise!

Eloise is a whole name. Bella is an abbreviation. Whatever you go for give the child the "whole" name then later in life they can choose what to be called. If, for instance, you were given "Isobel" then later in life you could be Bel, Bella, Izzy, or any number of other things - but if you're just given "Bel" you are stuck with it.

And now - a bit of Ella Fitzgerald:

As dorothy parker once said To her boyfriend, "fare thee well"
As columbus announced When he knew he was bounced,
"it was swell, Isobel, swell"
As Abelard said to Eloise, "don?t forget to drop a line to me, please"
As Juliet cried into Romeo?s ear, "Romeo, why not face the fact, my dear"...

Eloise is nice, Bella just makes me think of Twilight.

I have a Bella (middle name Rose) so I'd have to vote for that, though both are lovely.

I've loved the name for years, but a work colleague had a cow called Bella, which put me off slightly. Then Twilight came about - enough said. In the end I decided to ignore all that, and I love that we chose to call our youngest DD Bella (incidentally my neighbors at the time acquired a puppy a few months after Bella was born, which they decided, despite knowing DD's name, to also call Bella )

Belle is also lovely, and is the middle name of another DD. Yet another DD had the middle name Elle, and another, Ellsie (bit of a theme inspired by great-grandmothers).