What's In A Name?

This post is inspired by Deepa’s post on naming her little mango.

Even before I had a child, I knew exactly what to name him/her. If it’s a boy I wanted the names Rafael, Inigo or Joaquin. But tough luck, a very close friend of mine named her sons .. Ynigo Rafel and  Joaquin Matteo. So those off the list when I got pregnant. And then I got into F1 and I really love Sebastian Vettel. So I wanted Sebastian for a boy name but I thought it was too long a name for a first name. For first name I singled out on Noah (from Noah Wyle of ER)...Noah Sebastian. But when I got pregnant ABS-CBN came out with the teleserye Noah. So I was kinda hoping our baby wasn’t a boy hahaha! I'm pretty sure a lot of Filipino moms who gave birth around that time named their boy Noah. For baby girl names I liked Maya or Maja and Margaret so for a full name I wanted Margaret Yasmin or Margaret Jasmin. I also like the name Aurora (from Sleeping Beauty). Although if I name our girl Margaret Aurora my dilemma was should I nickname her Mau or Maui (as in Maui Taylor)? Hmm...

This would make you think I made my own daughter e  noh? No input from the father??? Really, everytime someone asks me if we have a name I say that we already have. If its's a boy it's Noah Sebastian and if a girl it's Margaret Y(J)asmin.

When we found out we were having a girl I conceded that hubby has to have an input too. So I asked him to come up with a girl name for our baby. I'll give one name and he'll give the other. Boys being boys he waited until the last minute. I remember I was already in my last trimester before he looked for a name. Heck, maybe even after we already packed our hospital bags. He wanted a Japanese name. With the help of a website he searched on Japanese names. I remebered he suggested Rei and I think a few other Japanese names. We also found Yanni in the website which is a Hebrew name with the meaning God is Gracious. I liked Yanni because we can still nickname our child Maya by just replacing Yasmin with Yanni. Or maybe Yanni Aurora so that I can still use the name Aurora. We were a bit undecided on it so he went back to searching for Japanese names. And then he stumbled upon Miya which means increasingly beautiful. And I loved it!

I was also becoming undecided on the fact that our daughter’s nickname is a combination of her first and second name. See, I work for an international organization and most of the times other nationalities don’t get our (Filipino’s) knack for nicknames. I have a Maria as my first name, and most of my contacts refer to me as Maria instead of my nickname. Foreseeing my child’s future in the international arena (arena daw o!), I wanted to give her a first name which she can use as her nickname.  

So there, that's the story of how we named our daughter...our increasingly beautiful pearl.