Dallas Girl and Boy from Beagá

Here They Are!

Ananda and Nathan

My Most Wonderful and Lovely Children

a.k.a Dallas Girl and Boy from Beagá

They are all dressed up for Festa Junina [June Party], a tradicional party celebrated in the month of June, thus the name. Also known as Festa de São João [Saint John´s Party], Brazilian culture is still highly influenced by the Catholic Church even though this is not a religious celebration. There is no culture of separation of church and state in Brazil, so spirituality is inter-woven into daily life. The party includes special yummy foods, kids and adults dress-up like country folk [see pic above] and do line-dancing.

I just want to make it clear that they don´t dress like this everyday. He really is that silly and she really is that sweet.

My personal experience with the Baby Name Game worked out wonderfully. I love the names we chose for the kids and they do too, all is well. I had a huge list of possible baby names both times. We did not find out baby´s sex during pregnancy. We thought that it would be an added extra bonus to see on baby´s actual birth day if we´d been blessed with a girl or a boy. So both pregnancies were gender-neutral and I loved it. It felt great to just be able to love baby without knowing if it was a boy or girl.

With Ananda I just knew that was her name as soon as I heard it during my pregnancy. Mother´s intuition is to be trusted. She still gets the usual question, Amanda? Now she´s perfectly comfortable with clearing it up. "Not Amanda, Ananda." I have to admit it got alot easier after the Amazing Ananda doll came out.

With Nathan, I had to see his face to choose a name, so I called him "rapaz" [guy] for the first 20-some days of his life. His birth was so fantastic but post-partum adjustment was what you could call PUNK. [more on that later, this post is about baby naming] I had to trust my intuition and respect my own time to integrate the experience. It´s perfectly okay to wait days to choose a name, if you need the time.

In choosing my kid´s names it was important to me that they have less popular names with deep spiritual meaning. Oh, and the names had to also be easy to read/write/say in both Portuguese and English.

Ananda is from Sânscrit meaning Bliss.

Nathan is from Hebrew meaning Gift from God.

And they are.

Baby blessings,

Alex

p.s. Alessandra, Alexandra and other variants of Alexander origined from Alexander the Great and means Protector of Humankind.

The Expat Baby Name Game [Part I]

Having a Brazilian baby when you and/or your partner is from a different country does have its perks. Choosing a name is not one of them! Don´t worry, we´ll get to the perks later. If your family is multi-cultural like mine, you´re likely to struggle a bit with choosing a name for your baby.

1. WOW! We´re having a baby!
Being pregnant is already such an adventure and having a baby is this beautiful blessing. So why burst my bubbly with choosing a name that is going to work in 2 or 3 languages?! This is a process that may take longer and will be more cross-culture sensitive than for most couples.

2. How do you pronounce that?
You can test the pronunciation of possible baby names on your local/native friends and family. They will be overjoyed to repeat names one thousand names over and they will surely research and sugggest their favorite names. This exchange can be very funny, especially when you get names that sound like words in your native language. Some will sound nice to the ear while some names will actually make you cringe.

3. How do you spell that?
A letter is just a symbol that represents a sound. When you choose a nice sounding name you may have to adjust spelling or if spelling is too complicated to adapt you may decide to choose another name altogether. Try to imagine your child as a preschooler learning to spell their own name. How do you imagine it will be?

4. Nicknames?
A person will have many names that will follow them throughout their lifetime. Birth names, childhood nicknames, married named, chosen nicknames. Brazil is a nickname crazy culture, most people have a nickname - by choice or by popular demand. Somenames have several nicknames, take my name Alessandra, possible nicknames: Alê, Lelê, Lelé, Leka, Lê. I go by Alex, go figure.

More thoughts on the Expat Baby Name soon.