Names and meaning
A lot of my friends are having babies. And as I wait with anticipation for news of their arrivals, what I really want to know is the baby’s sex and name. Why, I don’t know. It would be more pertinent as a woman to want to know size and time in labour. But names are more interesting; they are a reflection of the parents and of whom they want their child to be.
People choose names on the basis of judgments they make about them. Whether it is simply they like the sound of the name, have admired someone of that name, or have looked up the meaning of the name and like what it represents.
Thanks to Google, I found out my own name has royal connotations. While I’m sure this wasn’t a factor my parents took into consideration when naming me, I’m pleased to find it doesn’t mean thief, witch or something of that ilk.
And while we don’t pay much attention to the meaning of names in the western world, other cultures certainly do. I went to a Chinese wedding earlier today and found that the bride and groom’s names translated as green and yellow, which they interpreted as a clear sign of compatibility.
At some level everyone looks for meaning in names. Some friends who found out the sex of their baby sensibly kept it to themselves, probably so they weren’t pressured into divulging their chosen name and exposing it to the critique of others. After all, everyone’s got an opinion on these things and expresses what the name means to them.
I read with interest what’s in a name by blogger Marea with an E, who observed that with baby names everyone old was new again. Marea found 100 years of baby names on an NSW Government website. Retro names like Ava, Grace, Ruby and Lily from the early 1900s had made a come back recently. I like those names; they are so pretty - just like I’d want my little girl to be. (See, judgment made already!) ;-)
