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Thursday, April 02, 2009
the name game
Mayra Dilan Viasus Zoet
For those of you who didn’t know yet, that’s the full name of our precious girl.
We’re being asked often what the meaning is (of Mayra) and how we choose her names, so here goes an extended entry on the topic.
Choosing a name for our baby was a fun challenge. We started working on it about halfway through the pregnancy, though my list of baby names already came to existence many years ago (...!), always adding whenever I came across a nice one. Manuel and I agreed that we both would compile a list of 10, one for boy and one for girl. Then we’d compare the lists, create a shortlist of it and choose from there.
Nice concept but it didn’t quite work out that way. By the time it was time to start comparing lists, M had *one* name, and I had, as you might suspect, maaaaany. We ended up selecting a shortlist of my list, then adding new names, followed by re-creating the shortlist. And that a couple of times more until we narrowed it down to about 4 options per gender.
We wanted to meet our baby first and decided on the names the day after she was born. ‘Mayra’ jumped out to both of us. ‘Dilan’ is for added spark.
Inspiration
The list of names was a compilation out of name books (disappointing results...), the internet, but mostly from the Olympics 2008 and from watching movies—great to see many names coming by in the credits! Both the name Mayra and Dilan are from characters in a documentary and movie.
Requirements
One other challenge were the requirements. Manuel only had one: the name must sound beautiful. I agreed and added the following:
• must be pronounceable without problems in at least Dutch, Spanish, English and Japanese (speaking from experience!)
• has to be unique, at least not conventional
• must go well with the middle- and surnames
• should look good when spelled (I am a typographer after all. Love the letter ‘Y’)
• and the name should have a positive meaning
Speaking of the latter, it turns out that there are plural (international) meanings for both Mayra and Dilan:
MAYRA (pronounce mah-ee-rah)
Australian-Aboriginal: spring wind
English: beautiful
Irish: variant of Maire (Mary); star of the sea
Latin: myrrh, unguent (balm, ointment)
Hebrew: rebellion, overthrow
Gaelic: form of Mary; bitter
Spanish: form of Maria (Mary)
DILAN (pronounce dih-lan)
Welsh: born from waves; born from the ocean; son of the sea (spelled ‘Dylan’, originally a boy’s name)
Irish/gaelic: like a lion; loyal; faithful
Kurdish: to dance
Turkish: full of heart, full of fullfilling desires
VIASUS ZOET (pronounce vee-ah-soos zoot)
Following Latin-American tradition, and because we like the fact that it indicates our daughter is indeed a child from the both of us, we decided to give Mayra both our family names.
Viasus has no particular meaning. Zoet is Dutch for ‘sweet’.
So there you have it. Mayra Dilan Viasus Zoet: our beautiful daughter born from waves, full of heart, our sweet little rebellion.
Categories: mayra dilan • daily life • japan
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Comments:
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Hi there, been a long time- any new photos of Mayra?
I love the name game explaination, I’m going to use this posting for inspiration abuot Vivienne’s name! I never explained it on our site.Hope all is well… how old is Mayra now? 7 months?
Viv just turned 6 months. It goes by all too fast.Cheers,
Les