Namespotting

Sophie the Giraffe is Catholic

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You guys. You’ll never guess what I discovered just now. You know Sophie the Giraffe? That totally hip must-have teether? The one with its own Wiki page?

“It has achieved national icon status in France, according to Slate, with more sold each year (816,000 in 2010) than babies are born (796,000).

Sophie is also popular in the United States, where the toy has been available for decades and even appeared in the movie Three Men and a Baby (1987), and where it has become the best-selling baby product offered by Amazon.com. Launched in California in the trendy Hollywood area, it became popular through word of mouth, especially on Amazon.com since 2008. The reasons proposed for this success are that it is marketed as eco-friendly and a growing consumer mistrust of the security and health standards of products made in China since 2007.”

Yeah, that Sophie.

Guess who it was named after.

“Sophie the Giraffe, a French children’s toy, was named after Madeleine Sophie Barat because the first toy went into production on May 25, 1961, St. Sophie’s day.” (source)

Did you all know this?? Are you as amazed as I am?? I was literally just now doing a little research on St. Madeleine Sophie Barat when I came across this info. We’ve actually never had a Sophie — my oldest was born in 2004, four years before its popularity on Amazon took off, so it was never given to us and I never thought to buy it for my boys (despite the fact that everyone that I know with kids the ages of my youngers have one), but I’m kind of digging having a toy named after an awesome and awesomely-named saint! It’s definitely jumping up to the top of my must-give-to-new-moms list (along with the books of saints). So so cool.

Couple fun things

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I don’t know about you all, but I can’t stop crying about all the Planned Parenthood stuff — all those sweet babies — and on the one hand, I feel like it’s sort of disrespectful to think of fun, light things, like the only things we should be doing are everything we can to make it stop, but on the other, I personally don’t function well at all when I’m approaching the depths of despair, and I have a lot of people to take care of, so focusing on fun, light things is helpful. And I have a couple of them!

(1) I was sure I’d have some good name chats on my vacation, and I was right. My sisters-in-law know all sorts of people having babies, and some of the most interesting names I heard were:

— Benya (that spelling) (boy), said ben-EYE-ah. I’d seen Benia recently online for a couple (!) girls, which I’d thought was said BEN-yah, but then read that it was said ben-EYE-ah, so when my SIL told me about Benya I assumed it was for a girl, but no. I looked it up, and found this:

“Given Name BENAIAH

GENDER: Masculine
USAGE: Biblical
OTHER SCRIPTS: בְּנָיָהוּ (Ancient Hebrew)
PRONOUNCED: bi-NIE-ə (English), bi-NAY-ə (English)   [key]
Meaning & History
From the Hebrew name בְּנָיָהוּ (Benayahu) meaning “YAHWEH has built”. This was the name of numerous Old Testament characters.
OTHER LANGUAGES: Benayahu (Biblical Hebrew)“
Do any of you know any more about this name, or know anyone (boy or girl) so named?

— Traigh (boy), said TRAY. I feel like I’m pretty up on Irish names, but I’d never heard this one! There wasn’t much to find on it, but I did find this:

“The name Traigh is a baby boy name.

Irish Meaning:
The name Traigh is an Irish baby name. In Irish the meaning of the name Traigh is: Strand.“

I don’t even know what’s meant by “strand”? Like strand of hair? Like to strand on the side of the road? I do love the sound and spelling. Do you know any Traighs?

— Olive (all the rage right now!), Walter (on a tiny baby! sooo cute!), Lennon (so hipster!), Joy (as a middle name, I love it!)

(2) I posted about my consultation for Marci and her husband back in May — her baby has arrived! Go take a look at that beautifully named baby girl! It’s an awesome post — lots of birth story info and lots of name info, since they didn’t decide on her name until the next day, and Marci said she was surprised by what they ended up with. (It’s lovely!)

(3) The feast of Sts. Anne and Joachim was the Sunday I was away, July 26. My mom took this picture for me in one of the churches she visited:

stanne

and I saw this and this online on the feast day also (from here and here, respectively). Beautiful! And I’ve heard from a few different readers that St. Anne has been powerfully interceding in their lives. What a blessing to have her as a patron saint!!

My boys have let me know that my time on the computer is up and they are “staaarving” so I’m off to make lunch — we’ll chat more tomorrow! 🙂 ❤

From today’s preschool graduation

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I’m in the thick of graduation season here, which for me means two graduations — my 5-year-old graduated from preschool this morning (becoming a Kindergartner is SUCH a big deal!) and my oldest is graduating from elementary school on Monday (what??).

Of course I scoured the graduation program this morning for names — our school is small overall, but our preschool program makes up nearly half of the entire school population, and I don’t know most of the kids in the other sections, so I was excited to see if there were any gems.

Among 76 graduates there were ….

Three sets of twins (I always love to see what twins are named!) (alternate characters used for privacy):

— Laur3n and Mad!son (I’m a fan of some kind of connection between twins’ names … not too matchy matchy, but like with this set — same ending sound but different ending spelling and different names overall)

— Ann@ and L!bby (love!) (I wonder if L!bby’s given name is Elizabeth? Either way, I like this set a lot)

— Dev!n and L!za (I would consider the “I” in both their names to be a subtle link … also both two syllables … but very much their own names, nice job parents!)

Other names that jumped out:

— Natal!a (I actually had the opportunity to tell her once that her name is so pretty [one of my faves, really], and she was like, “My mom said she couldn’t come up with anything else, so she might as well name me Natal!a.” Haha!)

— Hall3 (I only think of Ms. Berry with this spelling, funny to me to see it on a little one! Great name)

— Am@nda and Carr!3 (not sisters, just classmates, but a bit of a time warp, right? They feel very … 80s? But I do love them both for different reasons — Am@nda because it means “beloved,” one of the best name meanings ever and so appropriate for one’s child; Carr!3 because it reminds me of Little House on the Prairie [one of the best shows ever] and can be a nick for Caroline, which is one of my fave names)

— G!0!a (I love love her name — the sound [JOY-ah], the spelling [they’re very Italian]) (I believe it was a family surname, and I think I heard that G!0!a’s grandmother considered it when naming G!0!a’s mom — great connection between Grandma, Mom, and Daughter!)

— 3mry (like Emory? Or Emrys? But not?) (not sure of gender)

— Ka3ley (I thought I’d seen all the spellings of this name, but this one is new to me)

— R0ry (just because I love it)

— L3ighton and Ev3rlie (these are 4- and 5-year-olds [not sibs], I’m just surprised to see what I think of as very recent celeb names/celeb baby names on kids who were born that long ago … but I guess actress Leighton Meester’s been around long enough to inspire parents of babies born in 2010/2011 since Gossip Girl started in 2007 [I don’t know why she and the show feel so much more recent to me? I never watched it, maybe that’s why] … And now that I look it up, the first celeb baby Everly was 2007 so I guess it has been on parents’ radar for long enough [babies Everly born in 2007 (boy) and 2013 (girl) and Everleigh in 2009 (girl)] Huh) (must brush up on my celeb news)

— The duplicates: three Michaels, two Julias, two Brendans, two Gabriels, two Liams, a Cecelia, a Cecilia, two Colins and a Cole

— And the most amazing of all … Ursul@! Wow! I’ve heard/seen it being discussed recently (most notably by this family, as a sister to Xavier … as an aside, one of the commenters referred to the Ursuline nuns, so Ursula and Xavier seem like uber Catholic sib names to me!), but I’ve never known one in real life, of any age. The little one in the program today has a very Polish last name … I looked it up in my Polish First Names book and indeed it says:

“St. Ursula was a 4th century martyr. In spite of the Ursuline Order, the name was not especially popular in earlier centuries. It was considered old-fashioned until the end of World War II, when it began to increase in popularity.“

So now I’m really curious to know if the parents chose it because of their ethnic heritage or because they’re fashion forward? (Also, Ursula in use for little girls now means The Little Mermaid is old enough that it’s not a bother anymore. That makes me feel ooooold)

Heard at baseball last night

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Between the boys playing baseball with my son last night (9 and 10 year olds) and the kids playing in the area around the field, names I heard that resonated:

Luca (boy) (I know a local girl named this as well)

Xander (Alexander)

Tad (Thaddeus)

Jack called Jacky by his dad (cuuuute! Out of context, Jackie is only a girl’s name to me, but in that context, it’s so sweet and affectionate for a boy!)

And I’m pretty sure I heard — but I’m having a hard time believing it — Uriah!