Behind Their Names

"Do their names mean anything?" is a question I'm often asked.  The short answer is: yes.  This post is the long answer explaining the meaning behind their names.

We thought choosing names would be easy.  As a young girl, I remember thinking whenever I heard a name that would grab me 'What a nice name.  Let me remember that.'  But when it was time to fill out birth certificates at the hospital, I could not recall a single name.  We thought it even selfish to choose a name if it was not reflective of who they are or would become.  (I remembered a girl I knew in college who had a squeaky little voice, was easily frightened and super shy.  Her name was Desiree... LOL!)

Anakai's name emerged from the Tagalog word 'anak' (pronounced ah-NOK, like 'a knock' on the door) literally meaning "child".  Filipinos usually use the phrase "anak ko" as a term of endearment meaning "my child" or "my darling".  We were enamored by this phrase while I was still pregnant, but C thought it sounded too masculine for a baby girl.  So we tweaked it just a little, and voila!  Anakai's name was born.  When I first told my mom, she said, "That means little baby chicken, or little baby rabbit."

C found somewhere that Anakai meant 'calm seafarer'.  I just googled it and found 'Ana Kai Tangata' is a cave on Easter Island.  Ana means "cave" in both Rapanui and Hawaiian (Maybe this explains why, when she says "OK" she pronounces it "oh cave" ?)  Here's a pile of meanings for Kai that I stole from Wikipedia:

• In Basque, Kai is a common word meaning "pier of a harbour" and a variant of the first name Kaio (from the old Latin name Caius)
• In Burmese, Kai means "strong", or "unbreakable".
• In Chinese, Kai is a given name which can be one of several characters. The most common Cantonese name is "繼" with five radicals for silkworms on sieve, meaning "unceasing (like silk)" or "following intimately (like silk)" or "continual (like silk)". The most common Mandarin name, "凱"， meaning "victory" or "triumphant".
• In Estonian, Kai is a female name meaning "pier".
• In Finnish, Kai is a common male name meaning "probably".
• In Hawaiian, Kai means "ocean".
• In Hmong, Kai is a male name that is sometimes spelled Kha.
• In Japanese, Kai may mean "big water", "the ocean", "the sea" or "paddle". Kai may also mean "change" or "the action to correct", "mediation" or "concerning oneself with".
• In Maori, Kai means "food", or the verb "eat" or "feed".
• In Navajo, Kai means "willow tree".
• In North Germanic languages, Kai means "keeper of the keys; earth". In Germanic languages, Kai means quay or safe harbor.
• In Welsh, Kai is a popular given name normally spelt Cai, from the Arthurian legend of Sir Kay.
• In Yoruba, a Nigerian language, Kai means "love".

We thought we made up Kacia's name until C googled it.  It is a Greek word meaning 'thorny or pointy' pronounced KAY-sha.  A form of acacia, an umbrella thorn tree that grows in Africa that giraffes feed on.  When mom went to Italy, she met someone with the same name, but they pronounced it ka-CHEE-ah.  Not us!  We pronounce it ka-SEE-ya.

We chose their names just a few days before they were born.  We tried to be sensitive to who gets which name by which side of my pregnant belly they were, then waited a couple of days to fill out their birth certificates - just to be sure their names would suit them.  Today, I can't imagine them being called by anything different.