What's in a name?

Me, cousin Ann, Sally, Dan, Ellisa, Logan. god-daughter, Lisa

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
A recent Christening in Ossett saw Ellisa Anna Clara christened in the magnificent but freezing Trinity Church, Ossett. An early question about each new life on Earth is what to call the new baby. Ellisa Anna Clara was blessed with a trio of names paying tribute to important members of her ancestral tribe. Celebrities often make the news with their decisions, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Apple and Angie Bowie’s Zowie – I’m assuming the Mums had more say than Chris Martin and David Bowie in those cases – but they have to take a bow before the choices of Adelaide Zappa (and her husband Frank) with their offspring’s names: Moon Unit, Dweezil and Diva Thin Muffin.

Ellisa's family and godparents, Mum and daughter, niece Jess and Chris. "How far that little candle throws its beams - So shines a good deed in a naughty world." (Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice)

What’s in a name?
It’s strange that, after a day or two, the baby (the child, the teenager, the adult….) become(s) the name they’ve been given. So my own children quickly became Emily and Harriet (though particular variations occur regularly…. Em, Emilia, Haz, HarrietRose….) and no doubt Ellisa will now forever be Ellisa, as her brother Logan is impeccably Logan, until either of them suddenly start wanting to be called a variation. Somewhere in America, no doubt Mrs Zappa found it unremarkable to shout “Moon Unit, come and get your tea! Dweezil, tidy your bedroom! Diva Thin Muffin, what time do you call this?!” Perhaps, like Zowie Bowie (who now prefers to be known as successful film-maker, Duncan Jones) Moon Unit, Dweezil and Diva Thin Muffin go by more ordinary names these days…. The most exotic (real-life, non-celebrity) name I ever heard about was Allegra Star Hoopengarner-Blaha; and a favourite name on one of my registers as a teacher was Fraser Rumble which, to me, sounds like someone who will one day be a hero.

Sally, Chris, brother-in-law Mick, sister Teresa and Jess

Meanings of names
I was named Antony (without an ‘h’ and I take pride in the lack of an ‘h’ since it was good enough for Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra.) My sister Teresa and I are godparents to Ellisa’s marvellous Mum, so it was a privilege to come full circle and witness our god-daughter having her own child named and celebrated in high style. And lovely to catch up with the extended family news. Names start to mean the people they are but there is a long tradition of trying to trace the origins of names, so I spent some time doing that for some of the guests at the Christening:

• Ann = “favour, grace” (Hebrew from Hannah)
• Terry = “ruler of the people” (Germanic from Theodoricus)
• Lisa/Ellisa = “my God is an oath/my God is bountiful/devoted to God” (Hebrew from Elizabeth)
• Dan = “God is my judge” (Hebrew from Daniel)
• Logan = “from the little hollow” (Scottish)
• Nick = “victory of the people” (Greek from Nikolaos)
• Daniela = “God is my judge” (Hebrew, feminine form of Daniela)
• Eliana = “Daughter of the sun” (Greek/Latin)
• Livio = from Livy (Titus Livius) who wrote a history of the city of Rome (Latin)

• Antony = from Roman family name Antonius, possibly meaning “priceless” (Latin)
• Sally = “lady, princess, noblewoman” (Hebrew from Sarah)
• Emily = “aiming to equal or excel” (Latin from Aemilius)
• Harriet = “rules the home” (Germanic from Heimirich to Henry to Harry to feminine form)

• Mick = “who is like God?” (Hebrew from Michael)
• Teresa = from Saint Teresa of Avila (16th century nun), possibly meaning “harvester” (Latin)
• Jess = first used as Jessica by Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice (probably based on Hebrew name Iscah from Bible meaning “rich”)
• Chris = “bearing Christ” (Greek from Christopher)

Siblings forever - Logan and Ellisa

Spirited Away

Changing, Moving, Travelling, Spiriting….
Time marches on. Things change. I’ve been out of sync with my blog and writing, partially as a result of radical changes to the structure of Rhenium Tales and Raydan’s story (see tags opposite) but also because of Christmas, New Year, my depression about Brexit and This and That. But my planning is up to date (again, for now….) and I can see the wood as well as the trees.

Chihiro (Sen) and Haku....

Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi
The subheading above translates roughly as Sen and Chihiro's Spiriting Away…. Sen is the name forcibly given to the heroine, Chihiro, in the Studio Ghibli film that English-speaking audiences know as Spirited Away. In the story Chihiro needs to remember and reclaim her own name before she forgets it and is trapped forever. We all need to remember and reclaim who we are. I recently re-watched Spirited Away with family and friends (in the "Harry Potter Film Club") and was reminded why it was a deserved winner of the 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The director Hayao Miyazak has created a fantastically imaginative world with inventive landscapes and extraordinary attention to background details.

Characters and scenes from Spirited Away

Pig parents….
The central emotional journey is that of Chihiro’s growing understanding that she has to rely on her own resources to survive in the world, rather than expecting her parents to show her the way. She begins the films angrily and sulkily, grieving because she has been forced to leave all her friends behind as her uber-professional parents relocate the family to a new house in the provinces. Chihiro’s father drives recklessly down a short-cut, boasting about his four-wheel drive and the family are drawn, dream-like, into an abandoned amusement park where Chihiro’s parents cannot stop themselves gorging on food which turns them (literally) into pigs.

Thank you, Amy and Maggie, for our Saki set....

River spirits and dragons….
Chihiro meets Haku, a young man who persuades her that the only way to save her parents is to get a job in the bathhouse (populated by weird gods and spirits) ruled over by the powerful Yubaba. Chihiro has to navigate adventures in the Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz-like environment and she meets further strange characters like the spider-like boilerman, Kamaji, the down-to-earth Lin, the hard-working soot creatures, the Stinky slime-god (who turns out to be suffering from catastrophic environmental pollution), the Yu-bird and the giant baby boy, Boh. Not to mention Yubaba’s sister, Zeniba, who delivers my favourite line from the film: Once you do something, you never forget. Even if you can’t remember.

Delicious food to accompany the film: Gyoza dumplings and Katsu Chicken

Tears flow upwards….
What's it all about? Love? Family? Childhood fears? The need to belong? Loneliness and alienation? Endurance? The rat-race? The dangers of material wealth? Self-determination and courage? Asserting your own identity? Working hard? Accepting what cannot be changed? The horrors of enslavement and exploitation? Environmental pollution? It’s about all of these things, and no doubt many more. At one point, tears flow upwards…. hello, February.