Thursday, 05 May 2011
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Why We Chose Those Names
As a proud parent, I've had the honor of naming my son, with the help of my beautiful wife.
But, baby naming isn't easy. Before adopting our son, I called him "X."
After much deliberation, we settled on the name Alnair, prounced Alna'ir. Alnair is the Arabic name for a star in the constellation Alpha Grux and literally means, "The Bright One."
(Image source: http://www.constellationsofwords.com/stars/Alnair.html)
He is in no way shape or form affiliated with:
Because that would just be weird.
Now some of you may be wondering how we settled on Alnair. To understand this, you'd have to know a little bit about my wife. Her name is Aludra (I call her Al). Her father, who everyone calls Papa, named her because well he loved the traditional Arabic roots of astronomy. Her name means, "The Maiden." When I found that out, I thought that was the coolest thing ever. So, I suggested that we name any future kids with Arabic star names. Al agreed.
After deciding that we'd use Arabic star names, we settled on two names in case we ever had children, which was iffy since we were both fighting cancer. The names were, Altair (boy) and Adhara (girl). Altair means "The Eagle" and Adhara means "The Maidens."
Funny thing was, Altair was originally chosen by my wife who had never played Assassin's Creed but when I heard it I was like, "YES!". I chose Adhara because it reminded me of Aludra and I would want my hypothetical daughter to be as awesome as my wife.
Things were going smoothly (well as smoothly as possible since Al miscarried) and then Alnair came into our lives. He had been abandoned and we found him and well we adopted him. Once we were officially his parents, we moved on to naming him.
We were about to name him Altair when I found another name that rhymed with Altair and had a deeper meaning. I discussed it with my wife and we agreed to name him Alnair, "The Bright One," because he's the brightness in our lives. That and if he had a little brother, we could name him Altair and Alnair could go, "Dude, you were named after me."
Then, Al announced she was pregnant. I think it was about a month after Alnair came into our lives. I was floored.
As time went on, we found that we were having twins. Boys. My wife gave me a glare as she said, "Four men. I was content with two, but four?" "We'll take extra care of you, my Queen," I signed to her and she shook her head muttering, "Four men."
Well since we were having TWO boys, Altair wasn't enough in the naming business. So with more research, we found the name, Alkaid. The twins will now be named, Inshallah (God willing), Altair (The Eagle) and Alkaid (The Commander).
(http://www.ne.jp/asahi/stellar/scenes/seiza_e/aql.htm)
(http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2007/10/the_star_of_alqaeda.php)
Have you ever considered baby names in detail? Were you named with great care and much thought by your parents or were you named on a whim?
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About the Author
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- From: Aaliyaan@xanga
- About Me: What should I say? Newly married, Cancer, Following Islam, and trying to live a normal life. Both me and my wife are fighting cancer. That basically sums it up. Oh yeah, and I'm an Israeli revert. There. Now I'm summed up.
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Comments (19)
i really like all those names =]
Those are interesting names. I didn't put that much thought into it, lol. I just liked the name Brianna and it went well with our last name. I gave her a middle name with an L, that way she would have my moms initials, therefore close enough to be named after her, and called it a day!
My son is Logan, a name his father chose, and I didn't learn its origin until he was born and named....Wolverine. I actually chose to embrace it...because who doesn't love Wolverine?
Then the middle names, I'm going to omit using this middle name in this post...but its my grandfather's middle name. His names combined would be too identifying.
The catcher? He has two middle names.
The second? Paul. Why? My best friend broke down crying, because I'd promised her I'd let her help me name my child and she wasn't there. So I asked her what I should name him. She said Paul. I said why? "Because its my favorite name, and you love the Beatles".
So though the name meanings are quite covered my son is named after: Wolverine, my grandfather, and Paul McCartney
He's pretty much made of name epic-ness.
If I ever have a daughter I want to name her Lilith (because of the name meaning) Opal (my grandma's middle name) Delia. The explanation for Delia is long...real long. But in short its a name that has showed up in my family history as Delia twice, and Mandelia once. It has a lot of meaning to me.
I love words, meanings and, of course, name meanings. I since I was in grade school. When I named my children I considered a few things: family names (sometimes boring in my opinion), ethnic heritage, and the actual "meaning" of the name.
Boys were always more difficult for me. I kind of feel like it is more difficult for boys/men to get away with exotic names unless they are scorchingly hot, with sexy foreign accents :)...so, anyhow what I ended up doing was naming my eldest (son) after my grandfather. Boring? Nooo way! My grandfather is Slovenian, and although his parents named him Joseph they always called him Joza (YO-zheh) (the Slovenian version). My boys middle name is one of his grandfather's first names as well as a family name in other respects. So, exotic name, yes...but I feel the uniqueness of his name combined with the history and meaning behind it made/makes it easier for him wield.
As far as my daughter goes, she was born on Good Friday,which happened that year to fall between the first day of spring and Easter Sunday. I am not a religious sort, but I was raised Catholic so I know these things :) Her name is a diminutive of Anastasia (which means spring, rebirth, or resurrection), so we thought it was appropriate. Not to mention we liked the sound of the name too! In addition, her first name is a version of her father's cousins name (who passed away some time ago). Her middle name is after his auntie who also passed away, plus it reflects part both his and my ethnicity.
So there it is...hope you find it interesting, or at least not mind-numbing :)
Although I wouldn't name my kids those names, I applaud you for putting serious thought into it. Most people just name them after celebrities or from movies....so brava! And congrats on the babies!
I came early so I think I was born before I was named. My name was picked out of the boys' section of a baby name book. My daughter, Caitlin, was named years before she was born. Caitlin was the name of one of the VR Troopers which her dad and I would watch everyday after work. My oldest son, Gabriel, was named before he was born. Gabriel is the messenger of God and my grandfather's middle name. Matthew, my youngest son, was named a couple of hours after he was born. His name is also biblical and I like biblical names for boys. :)
My son's first name is his father's middle name which also happens to be his grandfather's middle name and his great-grandmother's maiden name.
If I had kids (read: not ever gonna happen), their name meanings would be:
female: (name of a band. band sings one of my favoritest songs evar)(local shop at the beach I went to growing up)
male: (name of a friend's friend. friend was a guy I knew on the internet and I really liked his friend's name)(band name. I saw the band at the one and only Warped Tour I went to)
I have names picked out for my 'hypothetical' children (I don't want kids, but I know what I would name them if somehow the combination of birth control, condoms, and my lack of sex-having all failed lol). I would want boys, so I have names for my first 4 male children. If I ended up with girls, I have the names for 2 female children.
I absolutely love the OP's reasoning behind their name decisions. I love it a lot, in fact. I think they had a beautiful reason, those are beautiful names with lovely meanings. I wish more people put such thought into their kids names instead of just "tommy and sally" (nothing wrong with that, but I like thought-provoking). Very interesting, and I hope Al can deal with so many boys ruling the house!
Those are wonderful names congratulations to you and your wife and family for being blessed with three children and surviving cancer. You have a lovely story to tell your kids
My fiance and I picked out some names for when we have kids. Susanna Gail for a girl. My fiance was adopted when he was older so his adopted mom's biologicals son is behind the name. Her two sons went out one night around halloween to go see a movie. They went on a double date, the older son had become engaged the month before and they were expecting their first baby. The younger son took his girlfriend he wanted to marry. On the way home they got into a car wreck and the only one to survive was her younger son.
The older son's fiance's name was suzan. My fiance's mom said Im a lot like her and we have many of the same features, my fiance looks just like her oldest son too so we thought we would honor her memory by naming our first girl for her. The middle name comes from my grandmother who just passed from a 5 year battle with cancer. She was only 65 and she taught me so much her name was Rita Gail but she preferred her middle name.
Anne has to be a middle name for another girl because its a tradition in my family, its my middle name and my moms and it was her mother's sisters name before that. Before my grandmother was born her sister Anne and brothers and sisters and parents rented a basement apartment and every day when my great grandpa left for work the landlady would turn off the heat in the basement and leave for the day only turning it on 2 hours before my great grandpa came home. One day the baby Anne came down with pnemonia and still the landlady did the same thing. It wasnt until my great grandpa came home one day very early one day that he realized my great grandma was telling the truth. The baby girl died of pnemonia. We honor her as well.
For a boy its between Tristan, Michael, Gabriel and a few others. Stephen as a middle name for his father.
I don't plan on ever having children, but boy do I think about favourite names! I love the etymology of names.
If in the incredibly unlikely event that I had children, their names would be chosen with great care. I would want my kids to have names with strong, powerful meanings, and I would want to give them middle names that work well with their first names.
My favourite boy name is Seth--which means "appointed" in Hebrew, but Seth (usually know as Set) was also the Egyptian god of chaos and storms. Pretty cool name background! :)
Any son that my boyfriend and I would have would be given the middle name of Martin, because it's a long-standing tradition in my boyfriend's family to have one son with the middle name of Martin. I'm not too big on the name myself, but meh, it's only a middle name. And Martin means "servant of the god of war", so if we had a kid named Seth Martin his name would basically be "appointed servant of the god of war". Is that awesome or what?
My parents also put a lot of thought into all of their children's names. They chose names that they liked, but also names that fit well into the middle names. My first and middle name combined means "youthful girl from Ireland".
And yeah, when I read "Altair", my first thought was Assassin's Creed. XD
My daughters name is GiaMarie Jun. GiaMarie has no meaning and Jun menas "Obedient"
This one (Im pregnant) is going to be named RobertGuy Shogun. Robert - "Bright fame", Guy- "Guide", and Shogun- "The general"
I wanted a boy first, so I thought a really strong name would do well with him being the second child. Robert Guy is my husbands name and I really wanted to name my son after my husband but I dont think my husband really liked that idea but he came up with the idea of RobertGuy, because his family calls him RobertGuy like a first name. Not just Robert. Shogun is the name of a UFC/MMA fighter, I did not name my son after him, he is just where I got the name. I heard it and knew that that was possibly going to be in one of my sons names.
I didnt name my daughter after Gia Marie Carangi, but that is where I got her name I just love how its so classic and womanly. My middle name is Marie also, but thats not why my daughters name is GiaMarie. I just liked how GiaMarie sounded together. When she is older I feel like it will be a unique and beautiful name for a woman. The name Jun came from my husbands favorite band Nujabes, its the name guy in the band and he had recently died. Jun is a unisex Japanese name.
My parents have always taken great care into making sure that our names have meaning (I'm the youngest of five). My name is Tiara Noor, which means "Crown of Light" in Arabic. We aren't Arabic at all, it's just that my parents are very creative. I used to get picked on when I was little for having such an unusual name, especially the middle name Noor when so many of my friends have common names like Ann or Rose, but it wasn't long until I found in it a sense of pride.. My name means something and its beautiful. I plan on doing the same thing for my children one day.
I love your names! They seem so beautiful and powerful :) And the exotic foreign name is always really awesome. If/When I have children I would definitely look into the etymology of names. Although the ethnic background of the names would have to be considered too; it might be a little odd to have an Arabic name if my child is completely Asian hahaha. But if I marry someone Arabic then it wouldn't be as weird XD.
The "We'll take extra care of you, my Queen," comment is totally cute XD props to you.
I wish you much happiness!
Those are really interesting names :) I'm actually going to name my kids, whenever they happen, combinations of my grand & great grandparents' names.
I kind of wish I knew more about how I was named, now. I know a little, but not about why my specific name was chosen. All I know is that at first my mom thought of Deirdre, but because our last name is a 'D' she was worried it would sound like a stripper name. So then it was going to be Brittany, until that turned out to be one of the Chippette's names. After that, it became "well, we would have named you [male variant] if you were a boy." I don't know why that particular name came to them, though. It can't be due to popularity, though, because my mom is totally against 'popular' names.
I was named after my Great grandmother. My first name Alejandra (Helper of mankind) My middle name Francesca (Free). I think it fit's my personality pretty well. lol I often worry about people I don't even know and often help even when I don't have it. I also enjoy freedom and being able to just be and feel...
Our First daughters name we chose at 12 weeks of pregnancy. Juliana it means Soft haired youth, Which we chose because we liked the idea of her have a youthful quality in life. Her middle name is Christine which means follower of Christ. I don't know if she will be Christian or not but we liked the idea of the quality and examples shown through it. (just our personal choice)
I am now pregnant and had a hard time finding a name but now figured it out... Jeremiah Isaac meaning... Yahweh exalts and he will laugh... hoping he will be respectful and full of humor... lol
I don't think my parents gave much thought to my name, except my mom insisted it had to be American. She wished she had one when growing up and thus granted me with something she never had. Funny thing is, I totally wish my mom would have given me an ethnic name instead XD
While I don't have kids, when I do think of names I know it will be in a manner similar to this. Ethnic and meaningful.
This is a beautiful story...... I wish you and your wife, and your now multitudes (haha) of sons all the happiness and joy in the world! And you men better take good care of her!! Four men is a lot of work! haha