Name Dilemma

As you can see from our post last week, we are getting closer to the arrival of our newest addition to the family. I'm sure that you all are wondering why we haven't chosen a name yet. I thought I'd give a little explanation as to why this is so difficult for us.

First of all, we have a big family already. Getting 7 people to agree on a name hasn't happened - yet. Maybe it won't and the parents will have to make an executive decision. But, the parents aren't even in 100% agreement on anything yet either!!

Secondly, we are are Americans, but we live in Brazil. So whenever I hear a name, I think of how it sounds to us English speakers, but also how everyone that we interact with is going to say it. We haven't really cared about that with the other kids' names. The first four, Bronwyn, Ansley, Garrett, and Carys, were named in the US without any idea that we would ever live anywhere else. Brazilians can't say their names correctly, but we don't care, because we love their names and their names go with them. Anderson was born in Brazil. But Anderson is a relatively common name here. Anderson is a family name that we had been hanging on to for a long time and were happy to be able to use it.

Just to give you non-Portuguese speakers an idea of how Brazilians would pronounce things - here are a few examples:

- Anything with an "r" is a problem. Brazilians don't roll their "r's" but they flick them. So an "r" in the middle of a name kind of sounds like a quick "d" sound. An "r" at the beginning of a word is pronounced like an "h".

- "D's" are pronounced like "g's", and "t's" pronounced like "ch".

- No Portuguese words end in "n", so they don't really know how to pronounce an "n" at the end of a word.

- "an" in a word is pronounced like "un".

- "W" and the sound it makes don't really exist in Portuguese.

- "er" is pronounced like "ehr" or how we would say "ere".

- silent "e's" at the end of the word don't exist. They will pronounce the "e" like "ee".

So, here are some examples:

Brady - becomes "bday-gee"

Ryder - becomes "hy-gehr"

Landon - becomes "lun-daun"

Anderson - becomes "un-dehr-saun"

Cole - becomes "cau-lee"

Garrett- becomes "gar-ech"

These translations kind of put a different spin on your "favorite American name", don't they?

Lastly, we want a name that has a special meaning. Having a 6th child wasn't an easy decision to make and wasn't so easy to pull off. I (Benay) am 44 years old. We decided to try to have another one because we felt that this was God's plan for our family. We totally feel like this baby is God's gift to us and we want a name that reflects that.

So, there you go. We want a name that sounds good in English and Portuguese, has special meaning and that we all agree on. Not too hard, is it??

Our avenue for avoiding these problems has been to look at Italian names. We like a few Italian names, and English and Portuguese speakers say them basically alike. So, don't be surprised if our baby's name ends up being something you've seen on a pizzeria sign once before!!