In 2014 I featured a series of blog posts introducing you to 2,014 names. For the most part they were names that were brand new to me as well. Some names may be more familiar but I found the meaning or origin or some other aspect of the name made it worthy of inclusion here. You may love some of the names, you may hate some, but hopefully you enjoy learning about all of them.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

With these 7 names, we only need to learn 1,864 new names this year!! Piece a cake!


If you want to contemplate the vast possibilities there are for names, consult the A section of baby name books. I will still have A names you never knew existed long after all the other letters have been exhausted. Anyhow, enjoy today's names.

GIRLS

Aderinsola - Yoruba, meaning "a crown walks into wealth".

Bobette -I grew up with a Bobette. I suppose it could have been spelled Bobbette. I'm thinking she used two b's. This is a feminine variant of Bob, a nickname for the name Robert, though it would also work for any 'ob' name. Ironically enough, I think you could get several good nicknames out of Bobbette - Bobbie, Bobo, Bo, Bette, Betty, Etta. Even Boo. Edie too, do you think? Now I'm going to have to see if I can find another plain nickname like Bob that can be converted eventually into several new nicknames.



Citlalli - Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs) meaning "star". I've seen a few spellings of this name, including Xitlaly, I've known two - one spelled with the C and one with the X. In Spanish this is pronounced 'seat lahl ee' and that first syllable is very quick and you mainly hear the rest of the name.




Deseret - Mormon - Jaredite, meaning "honey bee". Deseret is a word in the Book of Mormon and here in Utah it's all over the place because Brigham Young used the symbol of the honey bee and beehive to unite his people and inspire them to work together. It's pronounced 'dez uh rhett'. I think it's pretty actually, and you wouldn't need to be Mormon necessarily to use it. My friend's sister's name is Deseret but, oddly enough, it's pronounced like Desiree (dez uh ray). While we're on the subject of des names, I want to add that I think Desert is an awesome option, for a boy or a girl (I'm true to my Escalante roots and love the beautiful desert canyons and sagebrush around here). Anyhow, the word deseret appears in the Book of Mormon as the word used by an ancient people who would have lived in the Americas at least 1,000 to 2,000 years B.C. The people took honey bees with them when they went to live somewhere else. I think that's a rather pretty image, even though practically, I would hate to have a bunch of bees around, especially just wearing skimpy loincloths and whatnot. For the uninitiated, Jaredite is the term used to refer to those people and they are supposed to have crossed the ocean in ships that were completely enclosed, waterpoof. I always pictured a flying saucer for underwater, and they were lit by stones God touched. Whether or not I believe in the actual occurrence of the story, I have to admit that it is still every bit as wonderfully magical as it was the first time I heard it.


BOYS

Eliakim - I saw this name and thought 'How can I pass up the chance to do a name like this? It's pretty freakin' awesome!' A Hebrew name derived from Elyaqim, which comes from 'el' and 'qum' or 'quwm'. The name means "resurrection of God" or "raised up by God" or "who God will raise up" or "God sets up". Elyaqim is pronounced "el-yaw-keem". On biblehub.com I found definitions for the roots 'el' and 'qum'. El is straightforward, it just means God. Qum is not. It means "to arise, stand up, or stand" but there is more to it than that. You can explore the very detailed explanation here.




Fedeas - I found this name on a name blog, Eponymia, as an "Old Quebec Name". Maybe that makes it French. I came across Phidias as a Greek name, from which it may have originated.  Phidias (or Pheidias) was the greatest sculptor of ancient Greece, and he created one of the seven wonders of the World (the statue of Zeus at Olympia). I have not yet been able to find out the etymology of Phidias, though.

Glisson - probably a variant spelling of Gleason, an English form of the surname O Gliasain, which, meaning 'son of Gliasain', ultimately comes from the Irish 'glas' meaning 'green' or 'blue' or 'gray'.

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