Padma Lakshmi followed through on her promises to bestow a traditional Indian appellation on her baby-on-the-way. Krishna Thea Lakshmi arrived over the weekend. (Hat tip to Celebrity Baby Blog.)
I’m far from up on my Sanskrit names, but I’d always thought of Krishna as masculine. A quick Google search suggests that I’m wrong about that. But could it be that, by choosing a daughter’s name with at least a hint of gender neutral style, Padma is tapping into a trend? And does Thea have an Indian origin, or was there some other influence?
For now, I’ll speculate wildly and look forward to the first post-baby interview. And the next season of Top Chef!
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I thought Krishna was a masculine name as well—shows what I know about Hindu naming trends. Krishna Thea is certainly a heavily “spiritually” themed name, it seems, what with Thea being Greek for “goddess, godly” (says Nameberry). Perhaps there’s an additional meaning in Sanskrit to the word “thea” but I would guess not.
Interesting choice, at any rate.
For over ten years I lived in essentially the Indian capital of SA. The city or that area was known as being an Indian area, so I came across a lot of Sanskrit names. That’s why Krishna sounds feminine to me. I don’t think she was trying to follow a trend by choosing a possible gender-ambiguous name. But, then again, what’s ambiguous to one person isn’t to another. I think it all depends on culture, exposure & popularity
I think she probably just chose a name or a name pairing that she really liked or perhaps one or both of the names meant something to her. Either way, I wish her the best of luck & am happy she finally managed to have a child. I’m sure baby will grow up to be just as gorgeous as Mom
It was originally masculine, but is now unisex in usage. At least where I lived, anyway
I do think Thea could possible have multiple origins. Kind of like Maia/Maya – one being Greek & the other Sanskrit.
Names can certainly have multiple ‘origins’ based on coincidence of similar sounds in different languages. But Sanskrit and Greek have a common predecessor linguistically, so the y ARE related anyway (both are part of the indo-european language family). Hence Thea does have a Sanskrit link…
This link shows the Greek word theos and the Sanskrit deva are related – both meaning ‘god’ (th and d are often interchanged sounds, linguistically speaking – any toddler or Brooklynite or Chicagoan will attest to this, and vs do tend to appear and disappear over time and distance in dialects with the eventuality of separate languages): http://my.opera.com/ancientmacedonia/blog/show.dml/2719990
Krishna might be spiritual, but brings to mind chanting in airports for me… where’d that go, by the way, I haven’t heard Hare Krishna in an airport for a very long time…
Hate it. Krishna just makes me think of Hare Krishnas, and Thea sounds like a nickname.