No 9 - black on white by Kirsty Hall via Flickr

Thanks to Kristen of Marginamia for sharing the stories of her daughters’ names.  They’re a truly distinctive pair, and yet completely wearable, too.  Big sister’s profile is up today.  Look for her sister’s story next Saturday!

What is your child’s name?
Nona Plum

What were your criteria?
Oh, so many! I have many more criteria than my husband, who just wants a name to sound beautiful and musical to his ear.

I often associate sounds with visual, taste, or touch sensations.  Maybe that’s why it seems totally natural for me to name a child after a fruit!

I find that a lot of sounds I love are very soft and round, but with something bold, strong, and weighty about them, too.  If my favorite words were were sounds coming from musical instruments, they’d be made by  lots of bells!  For both my husband and I, beloved names are words that our mouths utter very supplely; they have to roll and be very musical.  We also like having an earthy/woodsy element to names, but don’t want to venture into the realm of hippie cliches.

My husband doesn’t care about meanings.  I like to hear a good story behind a name, and I want that story to be meaningful.

Finally, neither of us wanted anything totally made-up or any first names ending in -en, -in, or -yn, though one ended up making into the top four because of family ties.  Otherwise, I really liked Arden and Rin.

Who was involved in the decision?
Just my husband and me.

We were pretty tight-lipped with our short list.  I might have shared a few of them with my incredibly supportive mother and best friend. Early on we slipped up and mused over some names we liked in a public forum. People freaked out! I was sent an article based on a study about how damaging odd names can be to a child. I was also sent suggestions for more classic names, and name horror stories, of course.

Additionally, we had people making “odd name” suggestions for names they thought would be right up our alley, but most were, um, so *not* up our alley. People mean well, but we just didn’t want the fear, negativity, or peoples caricatures of us to affect our choice.

We found that we couldn’t be inspired by beauty when we were influenced by expectations, so we locked up the gate after that and kept everything to ourselves.

What were the other options?
Philippa Rin (Pippa)  We do love horses, and I have some meaningful childhood stories associated with them.  We just love the name Rin. It means different things, depending on where you look, but we love the spelling and sound.

Ethelyn Muir (Eadie)  This is after my maternal grandmother, Lola Ethelyn (“Eadie”), and John Muir, one of my husband’s great heroes.

Harlow Beale I saw the surname Harlow in a magazine and loved it (though I’m glad we didn’t do this one because I anticipate it growing in popularity now that it’s a celebrity baby name.)  Beale is for Beale Street in Memphis, where my husband and I met, and to also celebrate music.

Maple Ethelyn Just love the sound of Maple. Ethelyn is, again, for my grandmother.

Magnolia Rin  The tree I climbed  and played under all through my childhood was a Magnolia tree, which was dear to me.

When did you choose?
Officially, we didn’t name her until a week after she was born.

We were filling out the papers on the last day we had to do so, driving to deliver them, and discussing the middle name in the car: Plum or Muir?  We counted to three and called out our choice; we both said “Plum” and wrote it down immediately.  Prior to nailing down the first name, we kept calling her Pippa and Nona, but both my husband and I confessed that we knew she was a Nona from the second we saw her.

Did the meaning matter?
It does to me!

The name Nona is Latin for ninth child, or just associated with the number nine.  I love the number nine – it’s always seemed so elegant.  Nona was also a Roman goddess, one of the three Fates. Clotho was her name in Greek , which I also like, but  I’m more a lover of Ancient Rome – so many cool things going on with the ancient Romans!   Nona is the spinner of the string of life, and has associations with the Yin/Yang principle and the spiral in nature.  She is also a pregnancy goddess.  The name means ‘breast milk’ in one language and is used for ‘grandmother’ in several others.  I love these meanings, too.

Most women named Nona that I’ve found are writers and musicians, and I like that she shares her name with women in those traditions.  It’s just full of positive feelings and associations for me wherever I look.

Plum has a story:  When I was nine years old I went on a trip with my mother and her friend.  We were driving along when she noticed a plum tree in someone’s yard, and asked that we pull over to pick some of the plums.  My mother indulged, and I was mortified.

She somehow convinced me to go the front door, ring the bell, and ask the man who lived there if we could have some of his plums. He was very gracious and insisted that I take as many as I like.  We picked beautiful fruit, and then we spent the car ride home eating plums.  I thought they were the most delicious fruit I’d ever tasted, and I had been brave! I still think of that every time I eat one.  I wanted to gift this sort of life-seizing whimsicality and expressiveness to my daughter with this name.

Did you second guess yourself?
Never for even a second after my husband wrote the name down. When he went in to deliver the paperwork, I called my wonderful sister-in-law, who had also just had a baby, to share the name with her, and it just felt even more perfect announcing it to someone.  After he turned in the papers, he returned to the car and said “Did we really just name our daughter after a fruit?”  We both smiled, giggled, looked at her, and she was *such* a Plum. What a happy moment! I can’t even begin to imagine her as anything else.

I absolutely love the story about Plum, Kristine.  It makes an unusual choice seem absolutely inevitable.  Thanks for sharing.  And I can’t wait to share her sister’s story next week!