Week-End, and Origins of the name Seva

Another Memorial Day weekend in the books.  Jeannie, Seva, and I just got back from visiting Mita and Eric.  We had dinner together there: hot dogs, baked beans, and corn on the cob.  Our dessert was muffins topped with ice cream (my combo being double chocolate chip muffin topped with vanilla ice cream).

While there, my friend Shay called me back.  Jeannie, Seva, and I took a drive to New Jersey on Saturday afternoon and I stopped by a house in Cherry Hill, where the online white pages indicated Shay may live.  Luckily I was right.  His wife answered the door and chatted with Jeannie and me for a few minutes, catching me up on a few details of Shay's life.  Unlucky for me, though, Shay himself wasn't there, so I left my personal business card with his wife and she gave his cell phone number to me.  The connection was completed when he called me tonight.  And I hope to complete the circle when we, hopefully, get together some time soon.  During our short conversation tonight, he said that I was "like a brother" to him, which made me very happy.  I was very happy to hear his voice, for the first time in many years.  And I hope to see him within the next month, so we can finally catch up and renew our friendship.

Now, since it's still early in Seva's life, I want to tell the story of how we chose her name.  Jeannie had shared with me early in the pregnancy that, at some point when she was younger, in college if I recall correctly, she had a dream in which her daughter's name was revealed to her.  The name revealed was Evelyn.  So, Jeannie carried that name with her as she got older and kept it in mind as a name for her daughter.  I listened to Jeannie's story with an open mind.  I wasn't sold on the name Evelyn, but it was early in the pregnancy, so I didn't judge or decide, I just let it be.  At some time later, perhaps about halfway through the pregnancy, after Jeannie had told me that she was open to considering other names, I thought to myself about our daughter's mixture, namely racially and culturally in heritage and ancestry and I wanted to identify a name that somehow captured that worldliness.  I also thought about my own name, which is short and simple, but also unique, that is, not common in American culture.  I wanted to identify a name that also captured that simplicity, but otherness that I was looking for.  So one night, while here at home (in the same spot where I'm typing this now), I went on to Google maps to look at a map of France to look at names of towns and villages, hoping that one might grab my attention.  I started around Paris, zoomed in pretty far so I could catch names of many of the smaller villages too.  Nothing grabbed my eye, so I slowly scrolled south, south, south, until I got to the Mediterranean Sea, where I slowly panned down the coast, until I crossed the border into Spain, right around Barcelona, when I noticed the village name "Seva."  I liked it immediately.  I opened another tab to Google the name Seva and it came up with a disambiguation page on Wikipedia (here), which showed that the name also refers to selfless service, volunteer work, and work offered to God. That sealed the deal.  I loved the name from that moment.  So I called Jeannie, without telling her the name, and asked her to look on the map to see if she would identify the same name as I had.  She couldn't find it or she completely overlooked it, I'm not sure which one.  After several minutes, and feeling disappointed, I showed the name to her.  I told her not to make a decision, but just to let the name sink in and add it into consideration.  I'm pretty sure I explained the other meanings of the word and my logic leading up to it (in line with what I just wrote above).  Months went by, the pregnancy went on until the end.  I never brought it up again, although internally I was definitely pulling hard for the name Seva.  Jeannie brought it up a handful of times, showing that she was certainly considering it and I think testing it out as your name, but I never responded one way or the other.  I wanted to make sure that she wasn't led to the decision, but instead reached it on her own.  As I recall, it wasn't until the moment you were born, when the midwife or nurse asked for your name, I looked at Jeannie and she said "Seva," and I wholeheartedly agreed.  I love the name.  And in the 6 weeks since you've been born, we've gotten a lot of positive reaction to the name, making me love it even more.