My daughter’s name means “Beautiful flower” in Swahili. Or “Innocent” in Hindu. I fell in love in both of those meanings and decided the name I chose for her fit.
When people ask me what’s her name and I tell them, they inevitably ask me one of two questions:
1) “How pretty! Is she named after someone?” or
2)”What an unusual name. What does it mean?”
I guess if I had just named my child “Emily,” the most popular baby girl name for the past couple of years, I wouldn’t have to deal with this. But the fact that I wanted my daughter to have a name that represented her heritage smacks me in the face almost daily. Let’s take a look at the top baby names for 2007, shall we?
Girls: Emily, Isabella, Emma, Ava, Madison, Sophia, Olivia, Abigail, Hannah and Elizabeth.
Boys: Jacob, Michael, Ethan, Joshua, Daniel, Christopher, Anthony, William, Matthew, and Andrew.
(Find the complete list for 2007 and any other year you’re interested in here.)
Nope, my daughter’s name doesn’t appear until you get to the 500s. Does that bother me? No, not really.
What about you all? Did you purposefully choose a name that wasn’t so ethnic? Did you pick a name that had special meaning in your heritage? How did you decide to name your child?
The name for my daughter had just appeared in my head and even after I looked through many books/internet sites containing different names for girls, this initial choice remained the same. It translates from Latin as “Sunny Life”… It’s quite a rare name and I also am often asked WHY I’ve chosen it for my baby. Even my relatives objected, they wanted more common name for her:)
My baby named after my father name, and I don’t care if it the 500 place on the list.