So That Came Out of Left Field...

Ahh, and now for the name explanation!

Before we went into the hospital we had narrowed the name search down to six names: Calista, Violet, Kienzly, Persephone, Natalia and Alexia - all of which were beautifully presented on the name wheel that my coworkers made for me. Of course, since I am so fickle and none of the names were screaming "pick me!" I also took a list of about 25 names. I know, crazy.

After she was born we joked that we needed to find a name that fit with the drama that surrounded her birth, a little bit leaning towards Persephone (which, coincidentally had always scored very low on all opinion polls) which is the Greek Goddess of the Underworld. Still not sold on the name we decided to sleep on it, hang out with her a little bit and then decide in the morning. We surmised that we had taken 12 hours to name Nikos so we could allow ourselves at least the same amount of time with this one. I think part of me was hoping that when Jeff visited he would help resolve this situation but since he had to reschedule his visit we had to scrap that plan.

Thursday morning when Taki got back to the hospital (I kicked him out at like 5am because he was snoring and keeping me up) we went down the list of names one by one. I asked Taki to go down the list and see if he saw anything that he thought "fit" her and after reading it he said that yes, actually he thought Olive fit her. I was excited because I thought the same thing. Olive had been on an early list for when I was pregnant with Nikos (I had liked it since the '01 when I was bartending at Bison and a couple came in with the most adorable little girl named Olive) but we hadn't really discussed it lately. It's funny, with Nikos I really felt that he didn't project any one name but it was completely different with her. I was also really excited that Taki and I had come up with the same conclusion on our own. For her middle name I really wanted to either use Kienzle or honor my sister in some sort of way. I suggested to Taki that we either name her Olive Dawn or Olive Einalem (E IN L UM), Einalem is Melanie's name backwards. Taki really liked the ring of Olive Einalem so we decided to go with that one. So, in a nutshell, her name was inspired by a previous Bison patron's daughter, as well as a combination of my sister and Greg Boyakins (Yrogerg Snikayob) who went on a ski trip with our family many, many years ago (in Tahoe??) and got Mel and I on a streak of saying stuff backwards. I know, random. Needless to say, we are really happy with our choice and Nikos seems to really like "Of Of" as well.