What's In A Name?

After we posted, 'What Did You Name Your First Child?', we received this amazing story that we had to share!

....

When generating name suggestions for our unborn child, my husband quickly discovered that this would be no easy task because the large majority of names he put forward were quickly vitoed by me with an eye-roll or gag or worse.  This, he discovered, was the major flaw of choosing to procreate with a teacher! As an additional complication, I have a very unusual name and always liked being that little bit different and therefore wanted my child to have a name that would be just a little bit different.  When looking at boys names, I had often stored away “good names for a rainy day” from children I had taught and come into contact with and a handful of truly lovely boys names had stuck with me.  I didn’t want anything too eccentric but just not your bog standard English name.  Cross referencing with my husband left us with only one name that we both liked… Kaiden.   I loved the strength of the K leading into the dynamic rhythm of the name and loved that it was slightly unusual but not so unheard of that people can’t pronounce it when reading it.  I looked up its origin and liked the Celtic and Arabic roots essentially meaning strength and companion which is a good direction to head in for boy, we felt.  

When he was born and we finally got to meet our Kaiden however, we were met with piercing and perceptive blue eyes but this blue was a shade Id only ever seen once before in my lifetime…. In the deep open waters of Hawaii.  Something special that few realise about Hawaii is that the surrounding seabeds are not on a gently sloping continental shelf like elsewhere but rather on steep volcanic rock faces so by leaving a harbour you can immediately be in deep open ocean and that is where these eyes of Kaiden took me when I looked into them while they peered into my soul and all he came into contact with.  Believe it or not, I later learnt that ‘Kai’ means ‘sea’ in Hawaiian! 

When my Dad flew over from South Africa to meet him when he was a few months old, I told him it was his job to assign him his Zulu name.  In the isiZulu tradition, the child is not named immediately but instead, yoke is spent with them first for their personality and essence to emerge.  Dad also commented on these piercing blue eyes and I mentioned the deep blue Hawaiian waters it reminded me of as he had explored Hawaii with us and he had this look come over him as he said, “That’s it! - He sees right into you.  His name is Amethle Hlabayo (closest pronunciation Um-eh-hle thla-ba-yoh) meaning ‘piercing eyes’. Deep, searching, perceptive and inquisitive eyes… a very well suited name for this boy - a strong companion with elements of our travels interwoven into the very fabric of his adventurous nature that loves to explore in every sense of the word.

• Anonymous