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.
Hate it. Krishna just makes me think of Hare Krishnas, and Thea sounds like a nickname.
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…
I do think Thea could possible have multiple origins. Kind of like Maia/Maya – one being Greek & the other Sanskrit.
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 thought Krishna was a masculine name as well