Shokufeh is... home

Still no names

As might be expected, given that our names are Sam and Shokufeh, my husband and I are having some trouble agreeing on a name for our child. He leans toward simple, I lean toward unique. He leans toward English, I lean toward Persian.

About a month ago, I suddenly awoke in the night, with a name for Bean in my head. “Oh, that’s a great name! I should wake Sam up and tell him.... No, he probably wants to keep sleeping. I should write it down.... No, it’s so good that I’ll remember it when I wake up in the morning, and I'm too tired to get up and find a pen.... I’m so glad that Bean told me the name she* wants.”

The next day, hours pass without this rapid exchange with myself cming to mind. Midmorning, I remember my thoughts of the night before, except that I can’t remember the name, the name I was so sure I’d remember. But I eventually brought it to the surface of my memory and called Sam. “What do you think of the name Navea?”

“Where’d you get it?”

“It came to me in the middle of the night. I think it’s a message from Bean.”

“Mmm-hmm. What’s it mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you spell it?”

“I don’t know. I guess N-A-V-E-A.”

“I’ll look it up.”

A little later, he calls me back. It means cloud in Alphistian.”

“What’s Alphistian?”

“I’m not sure. I’m looking it up…. Um, it’s a made up language, created by a nine-year old.”

“That’s it?”

“… Well, if you spell it a little differently, N-E-V-A-E-H, it’s heaven, backwards.”

“Never mind. Here I was all excited that maybe Bean was sending a message, but I’m not using a name from a made-up language, or naming her heaven, backwards. What kind of message does that send? You’re the opposite of heaven?”

Despite the sad results of googling the name, it floated around in my head for a few more weeks. I kept thinking that I could put it fully to rest, if I could just remember where I’d heard it before. Since there’s no way Bean would send a made-up name, I’d misinterpreted its coming to me in the middle of the night. Did I get it from something I’d seen on TV? A movie?

Last week it finally came to me. I immediately called Sam to let him know that we will not be naming our child Navea or Nevaeh, or any variation thereof. (No offense intended to any of you out there who may have or love this name.) “Remember that show we saw last year? About the brothel in New Orleans? With several generations all working together? You know, the grandmother was the madam, the granddaughter was a prostitute?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s where I heard the name Nevaeh. That was the granddaughter’s daughter’s name. Remember? There is no way I want to use that name.”

“Yeah, I remember. Child services took her away. But maybe she represents the family’s last hope.”

“That’s nice and all for them. But I don’t want to use it. Yeah, we named you after a hooker’s daughter.”

So, we’re back to the drawing board. I liked the uniqueness. Sam was attracted to the made-up-language and the spells-another-word-backward aspects. But we’ve got our standards. And naming our child after a baby on an expose about a brothel in my hometown doesn’t fit into them.

*For no real reason, Sam and I often think that Bean is a girl. Maybe it’s that we assume we’ll follow the pattern – we have four nieces and no nephews. Getting a name in my head that was a girl’s just added fuel to the fire. I put a lot of credence in dreams.

Posted by Shokufeh at July 22, 2005 09:31 PM