Whats In A Name...

i never did like my name. it was just ... a name. and as a name, it wasnt very nice. plus, it didnt have any meaning, not that i know of. none, apart from, my geography teacher would love telling me, it meant "tasik garam". oh bestnya...

bearing a name with no meaning, made me determined to give good, solid, meaningful names to my children. looking at baby name books is a must whenever i step into a bookstore. i used to tell tiza what i wanted to name my children - i cant remember any of them now, but i still remember she wants to name one of the boys, razaleigh (after a certain mr. rashleigh knight).

when i got married, and pregnant, i told hubby, i want a name which means leader. someone strong and dependable as our first son (well, it just had to be a boy, hadnt it?!). we came up with "amir iskandar" which means leader and a defender of humankind. iskandar just seem so heroic, it brought up and gave strength to amir's plain name. i love the combination of his names.

that done, with our second child, i wanted to concentrate more on him as a good person. i didnt want our second child to be drowned from all the attention given to his brother (middle-child syndrome, i was told), so his name had to be equally powerful. i also wanted a name with a strong religious meaning, hoping he'll be the harun din of our family. and to me, that would mean having a name that ends with "din". from that, came "asyraf izzuddin". translated it means, roughly, the most honourable might of religion. so there...my second baby will never be drowned by his brother with a name like that. brings tears of pride everytime i remember the meaning.

even though its early still, we can see the effects the names have on the boys. amir for one, well...we cant see him as a leader yet, but we can tell from the way he is with people and how friendly he is, that he has the qualities that would make him a leader and a people person. asyraf on the other hand, is quiet and sombre, that it makes people take him seriously and would make people listen to him and seek his knowledge. that's what we see in the both of them - they're so different but they're both strong in their own way.

for our third (it soooo has to be a boy), we want a name that would mould him to be a person who can adapt to the differences of his brothers. we want someone who can go well with amir's hyper personality and asyraf's quiet and serious self. we want someone who can bring these two together. so we have chosen a name which means family - that would be his second name. we are trying to find a name that means "one who bring together" so that it would mean "one who brings together a family". we cant find names that would mean exactly that, though, so we're deciding between 3 names. we really love the combination of 2 names which means "the most honourable family", unfortunately both names have the letter K. add that to the name engku, he'd have an overdose of KKKKK. so now, we're left with 2. we've got 34 weeks to think and choose.

now we have to think what would be good for our forth child. what now...leader, tick, religion, tick, family, tick...apa lagi?

p/s i heard once that my dad named me after a book that he liked. so my name's not that bad lah kan?