Hope Edelman, today’s guest blogger, is the acclaimed author of the influential bestseller Motherless Daughters; her new book, a fascinating and inspirational personal odyssey titled The Possibility of Everything, is out this week.

 My daughter got her name from a San Francisco Guardian newspaper box.

Actually, she got her name from a prophetic graffiti artist who chose a Guardian newspaper box as his canvas. But I get ahead of myself.

It was September 1997, my eighth month of pregnancy, and my husband and I were taking our last pre-baby vacation. All the way up the California coast, we debated what to name our daughter.  She was to be named after my mother, Marcia, who’d died when I was seventeen. By Jewish tradition, this meant we needed a name starting with an M.  After several false starts we’d  narrowed the field to Maya— popular in my husband’s native Israeli culture–and Melanie, just because we liked it.

That evening, we checked into a hotel just outside Chinatown. As we were getting dressed for dinner, the debate continued.  Maya or Melanie? Melanie or Maya? The decision felt like a profound one, a label our unborn daughter would carry with her for life, and given that it was one of the very first choices we’d make for her as parents, we wanted to get this one right.

As circumstance would have it, we didn’t have to make the decision alone. When we stepped onto the sidewalk for dinner, we were greeted by spray-painted graffiti letters sprawled across a newsbox right in front of the hotel:  MAYA.  I stood there staring at the letters in disbelief. Even to a hardcore skeptic like me, it seemed like some kind of sign.

We named our daughter Maya Jill. Three years later, we took her on a journey to Central America to get rid of a troubling imaginary friend, a story I tell in my newest book, The Possibility of Everything. 

When one of my friends read an early draft of the book, he was concerned about my use of names. They were just “a little too precious,” he said.  “Maya was healed by a Maya healer, and your name is Hope? No one’s going to believe it.”

But what could I do? It’s a memoir. It would have been silly to create pseudonyms for my daughter and myself. So I left our names as they are.

Granted, it was confusing as a writer to have “Maya” describe both a child and a culture.  I had to do constant and fancy gymnastics to keep Maya’s name from appearing in the same sentence where “Maya” was also used as an adjective or proper noun (as in “Maya temples” or “the ancient Maya”).   (more…)

A few years ago I met a couple named Anoush and Harout, (who, predictably, had a last name ending in ian, the Armenian patronymic meaning ’son of”) and was immediately intrigued by the rich sounds of their names.  That, plus the lingering memory of the characters in William Saroyan’s My Name is Aram–Arak, Dikran, Jorgi, Garro–piqued my interest in Armenian names.  It’s an ethnicity that has made few inroads into mainstream American nomenclature, but, while most of these names are destined to remain confined to the Armenian community, there are definitely some candidates eligible for wider circulation.

Many of these names date back to antiquity, some coming from the Bible (eg. Sahak for Isaac) or relating to nature (Shoushan, meaning lily), and there are a number that are close cousins to more familiar appellations, such as Hanna, Rouben, Ester, Yulia–variations with their own distinctive charm.  (And note that since Armenia does not use the Latin alphabet but has a 36-letter alphabet of its own, transliterations bring about wide variations in spellings.)

Here, some of the most appealing Armenian choices:

GIRLS

ANNIG, ANI

ANOUSH (means sweet)

ARAX, ARAXI, ARAXIA, ARAXIE

ASTINE

CAROUN

(more…)

They’re not like those jaunty Irish surnames that kind of jump out and hit you in the face–no way you could see Finnegan or Donovan as anything else.  But Scottish surnames, somewhat more subtly, have affected American nomenclature to a surprising degree.

Many that could pass for Irish or English are actually old Scottish clan names, and several have long been accepted as first names in this country–a list that includes Allan, Bruce, Douglas, Leslie, Mitchell, Murray, Stewart, Gordon, Lindsay, and, of course, Scott.

Scottish surnames are divided into two groups: Highland and Lowland.  Highlanders didn’t use fixed family names until relatively late–until the 1700’s a man was often designated by his father’s name or would adopt the last name of a laird to curry his favor.  It was the Gaelic Highlanders who used the prefix ‘Mac‘ to denote ’son of”.  (more…)

Latin culture is influencing everything in the United States, including baby names.  With the growing prominence of Latin stars and parents of all ethnic backgrounds more interested in using culturally significant names, Hispanic choices are moving up the popularity lists.

Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, Jessica Alba and Ricky Martin may be among the most famous Latin celebrities, but their names were inspired by the general culture and are hardly inspiring modern baby namers in search of an authentic Latin choice.  The Latin celebrities (and a few fictional characters) from the worlds of film, music, sports, and fashion whose names have proven influential in the U.S. include:

Female

AMERICA FERRARA

CAROLINA HERRERA

DAISY FUENTES

DORA the Explorer

EVA MENDES

ISABEL TOLEDO — A favorite designer of Michelle Obama’s

OFELIA — The young heroine of Pan’s Labyrinth

PAULINA RUBIO

PENELOPE CRUZ

SALMA HAYEK

SELENA

SHAKIRA

SONIA BRAGA

THALIA

Male

ALEX RODRIGUEZ

ANTONIO BANDERAS

DIEGO LUNA

GAEL BERNAL GARCIA

IVAN RODRIGUEZ

JAVIER BARDEM

NARCISO RODRIGUEZ

OSCAR de la RENTA

RODRIGO SANTORO

photo by Sara Atkins

Several names that rank high on the popularity list in the U.S. have a Latin flavor and are well-used by Hispanic parents along with parents of many other ethnic backgrounds. Isabella, Olivia, Sophia, Angelina, and, for boys, Gabriel fit into this group.  Names (and variations) with a more distinctly Latin heritage that are climbing the popularity list in the United States – and are definitely not for Latin babies only — include::

Girls

ALEJANDRA

ALICIA

ALONDRA

ANA

BIANCA

CAMILA

DULCE

ELIANA

ESMERALDA

GUADALUPE

KARINA

LILIANA

MARIANA

SOFIA

VALENTINA

VALERIA

XIMENA (more…)

Today being Canada Day–which is roughly equivalent to the US Independence Day–it seems like a good opportunity to browse through the bilingual Canadian name bank and see what we can find–actually,  more unusual–even exotic– names than you might expect. For instance, in the French colonies known as Acadia, there are such boys’ names as:

ALPHE

CALIXTE

ELZEAR

EMELIEN

LEONIDE

(more…)