Our eldest we named her Sephria Therese. Sephria comes from Papa Joseph and Mama Mary's names while Therese is from St. Therese of Liseux, one of the daddy's favorite saints. Even before I got pregnant we've already come up with that and decided to officially have it as the name of our first baby girl. Her nickname is Sweet (my parents gave me that nickname when I was a child but somehow it did not stick because according to my mom, how can they call someone Sweet who was always frowning- yes I was a grumpy baby back then hahaha).
Our second child we named her Miella Izabeth. Miella comes from "elle" which means "she" or "girl" in French. The daddy's favorite foreign language subject back in college was French so he wanted to incorporate something French into our second baby girl's name. We just added the "Mi" so it will come out meaning as "my girl." The second name comes from St. Elizabeth. Her nickname is Heart because originally I was due to give birth to her the last week of February 2004 but she came out to the world March 1, 2005. The nickname stuck because the grannies were already calling her that even when she was still in my tummy.
Our third child we named him Euan Karl. Finally, a boy! This wasn't originally the name we had planned for him. Since it will be our first son, the daddy wanted to name him Alfil Jae, which means "first son" in Latin and Jae is a combination of our names, Jade and Eve. Suffice to say, it will mean "first son of Jade and Eve." Latin was the daddy''s favorite subject during his seminary days back in high school (yes, that also explains the need to incorporate a religious name). But one day in one of the daddy's casual conversations with his colleagues in the office, he shared that he was excited for the birth of his first son and that we were gonna name him Alfil Jae. Out of nowhere, one of his colleagues commented that the name sounded so gay (that colleague was gay so he would know hahaha), and that if we would give our first son that name he will surely become part of the LGBT community someday. Upon hearing that, the daddy decided outright to create another name! No offense to our dear LGBT friends but him being the only son he would want to make sure the surname's going to be passed on from generation to generation. I can almost imagine the look of panic on his face! So now going back to the name Euan Karl, Euan comes from the variation of the name Ewan, which is a Gaelic name for John, from St. John Marie Vianney. But needless to say, the daddy was also a huge fan of Ewan Mcgregor who played Christian in the 2001 movie Moulin Rouge and of course Obi Wan in the first Star Wars Trilogy. Karl comes from St Charles Borromeo, from his beloved alma Mater University of San Carlos in Cebu. We just call him "Kuya", or "Karl". The daddy does not like to give the boys a nickname for reasons unknown.
And so for our dear little 6-year old birthday boy Zirkev Jae, whose name stands for "church" in Slovakian, and of course the second name Jae we finally got to use for him. We initially thought our fourth baby would be a girl and so the plan was to give the name Chiesa, which also means "church" in Italian. Turns out the daddy won't be hung up anymore on propagating the surname since he has 2 boys now, haha. But this was one scary pregnancy because on my 3rd month I had threatened abortion, probably due to stress at work, and was on Duvadilan and Duphaston and complete bed rest for two weeks. Again, no nickname, we just call him Jae at home.
We thought we will not get pregnant anymore but what do you know, another baby boy was gifted to us and we named him Yansen Yorge. Yansen was derived from Blessed Arnold Janssen and Yorge is from our dear Pope Francis whose real name is Jorge Mario Bergoglio. This boy is at his Terrible Two Stage as of the moment and is very ,very busy keeping my patience at bay hahaha. Again, nicknames are a no-no for boys per the daddy, so we simply call him Yansen, but the Ates fondly call him Yanyan. The girls could not help it, to the daddy's dismay, hahaha.
Hmmm. As I was writing this entry it suddenly dawned on me that all of our children's names were created in the daddy's favor! I can't even begin to think how I was cajoled into agreeing at these names because I really wanted those classic and popular names like Caleb, Christoff, Patricia, Alyanna, Georgina, et al. The daddy has always been the non traditional one, always going outside the norms, not the type who joins the bandwagon. But then again, I love the distinct names of my children so no trace of regret there.
Soooooo... how about you mommies out there? How did you come up with your chidlren's names? I would love to hear your stories on these too! Shoot me an email or comment below. Can't wait to hear from you! Ciao for now!
xoxo,
Eve
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.." - William Shakespeare
credits to the owner of this pic: source
