As any parent knows, naming your child can be one of the most stress-inducing decisions you'll make. I mean, this is a permanent decision here! The name you give your baby will stay with him/her until he/she turns 80 - what if you screw it up? I certainly spent lots of time during my pregnancy fretting about this. Before we got the ultrasound we started to think of boy names because we figured it would be harder to come up with a creative, different boy name that wouldn't result in the poor child being tormented on the playground. We figured it would be super easy to come up with a girl name because you can be a whole lot more creative with a girl's name and get away with it. So when we found out we were having a girl we figured this naming business would be a piece of cake.
Umm... turns out not so much.
You can certainly be more creative with a girl's name - but then that creates a lot more choices. And apparently Mark and I don't really agree on pretty girl names. And we had a lot of criteria: it has to be a name that will last - so no "Shaneequ'a" or something weird like that. No names that double as boy names. Personal pet peeve of mine - a name should be for a boy or it should be for a girl. No middle ground. No names in the top 100 most popular girl's names list. And no names that are also a noun or adjective - no "Hope" or "Pearl" or "Lake." My first choice was Sophie. Mark shot it down - Sophie is a name for a 90-year-old. He liked Stephanie and Rachel. I shot both of those down. Stephanie is too commonplace and I have a bad associated with the name Rachel. A girl by that name in Tennessee would like to tell me that because I was Jewish and didn't believe in Jesus I was going to go to hell. I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now but still, the name leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Mark really liked Anastasia - pretty but I just worried people would think of the cartoon. For awhile we told family we were going to go with the name Alexia because it was the only name we could really agree on. I was getting frustrated because Mark would like a name one day and the next day he decided he didn't like it. We were fine with Alexia for several weeks, and then one day Mark suddenly said he didn't like it anymore because it didn't "flow" very well. AARRGH!! I brought up a name that I liked and Mark had been lukewarm about, hoping that he had either forgotten the name or that he would go for it out of desperation since by this point we were about a month away from the due date.
"What about Mira?"
Silence.
"I like it."
Whew!
Mira (mee-rah) is a Russian name that means peace. We were looking at a lot of Russian names, partly because I have Russian ancestry on my mom's side and Mark also has Russian ancestry from his adoptive family, but also because these are obviously feminine names that are also very classic. And not very common either.
Then the middle name. I contacted my Japanese grandmother for suggestions for a Japanese name. One of the suggestions was Yukiko. Even before we knew what it meant we loved the sound of it. When we were told the meaning it was just even more perfect. When we found out the due date was in February I started joking that I would go into labor in the middle of the night during a blizzard. Yukiko means snow. And wouldn't you know it, it did snow as soon as we got to the hospital and the whole day that she was born. Too cool for words. The name was pretty much chosen for us, and we were able to give tribute to Mira's ancestry. You can't be where you are now if it wasn't for the people that came before you.
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| Mira Yukiko, 9 days old |
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