How the name "Aanika" came to be!
Priya was in the hospital for 2 days before she was sent home packing. Those two days seemed like a whirlwind at the time - with congratulations flying in from all sides, frequent back and forth trips between home and hospital and a night, and information overload about caring for new borns from the nurses and doctors at NICU. Little did we know that this was hardly a whirlwind, but rather just a gentle gale with promises of life changing wind patterns to follow. But within these two days we had an important job to finish - the repercussions of which could very well haunt us for the rest of our lives - and that was to choose the just-perfect name for our little one.
Luckily for us, just a day before Priya was rushed to the hospital we had narrowed down to just two names (from our several-times-narrowed-down-short-list of 8 names). And the contenders still standing were "Aanika" or "Amelie" (like the French movie). Kanak had already voiced strong opinions against Amelie the night Priya went into labor. And so the polling began. Papa was dead set against Aanika while Mom favored Aanika over Amelie. Aanika had already polled way ahead with all of Priya's colleagues and friends at work (though Amelie wasnt in the running quite then). Tania (Priya's spunky sister) had other ideas for her niece's name, but preferred Aanika of the two, and so did rest of Priya's family (just as long as both of us were happy with it).
Mihir (Kuntal's brother) and Dhwani (Mihir's wife) had a fancy for their own suggestion, Diya (perhaps just so her initials will spell "Dee Dee", one of Mihir's favorite eating joint in the Bay Area). But again, between the two, they went for Aanika. But I suspect, Mihir is still hatching plans to brainwash his poor little niece into thinking she is named Diya.
Priya's doctor, Dr. Catherine Hill stopped by on Monday morning to check up on Priya and when the talk turned to names, she strongly preferred Aanika over Amelie. Her reason ? She was probably thinking Emily when we said Amelie, and there are just too many Emily's (she was the eighth Cathy in her class, she elaborated). And that drove the nail home just a little further.
Later that night, Papa, Mom and I set down to finalize the name as I was filling up the application for SSN and registration of birth forms. It seem only Papa needed convincing since Aanika had polled ahead with almost everyone, and both of us also really liked the name, and she looked just like a little Aanika to us ! So we googled all meanings, statistics and variations of Aanika for several hours. And in the end, with some fair amount of convincing from Mom and all favorable results from Google, Papa eventually gave his blessings to the name Aanika.
And just then and there, I called Priya at the hospital, and the name Aanika was officially finalized. I filled up the forms with that name before anyone has any other bright ideas and submitted the forms the next day to the birth registrar at the hospital - and she was formally and informally, offically and legally... Aanika !
A few days later, after some more googling and as the name Aanika sank into our minds and heart, I realized what a good choice this had been. It has ethnic Indian roots, and in Hindi it means, "Goddess Durga", one of the prominent goddesses of Hindu religion and also, "very beautiful". Interestingly it has language roots in several western languages, and it means "grace" or "graceful" or "gracious" in Spanish, Hebrew, Dutch, Czech and Scandanavian. Its roots can be traced to the name "Hannah" and its variations in a large number of European and other languages, which means "favor" or "grace". Further research revealed that it even has African roots with several meanings such as "smart, beautiful, child of god" and, "sweet-faced" specifically of Hausa origin. A variation "Anyika" means “she is beautiful” in Vai. And I wonder if it means anything in Japanese.
Speaking of pronounciations, although the most common written form for this name is "Anika", and despite some variations in pronounciation like "a-nee-ka" and "ann-ni-ka", the one that we really liked was "AH-ni-ka" (with a long A), . So we decided to go for the written form "Aanika" to avoid any confusion with pronounciation (and hopefully save her a few headaches when she grows up) and also because this variation was quite uncommon and unique.
And thats how the name Aanika came to be !
Luckily for us, just a day before Priya was rushed to the hospital we had narrowed down to just two names (from our several-times-narrowed-down-short-list of 8 names). And the contenders still standing were "Aanika" or "Amelie" (like the French movie). Kanak had already voiced strong opinions against Amelie the night Priya went into labor. And so the polling began. Papa was dead set against Aanika while Mom favored Aanika over Amelie. Aanika had already polled way ahead with all of Priya's colleagues and friends at work (though Amelie wasnt in the running quite then). Tania (Priya's spunky sister) had other ideas for her niece's name, but preferred Aanika of the two, and so did rest of Priya's family (just as long as both of us were happy with it).
Mihir (Kuntal's brother) and Dhwani (Mihir's wife) had a fancy for their own suggestion, Diya (perhaps just so her initials will spell "Dee Dee", one of Mihir's favorite eating joint in the Bay Area). But again, between the two, they went for Aanika. But I suspect, Mihir is still hatching plans to brainwash his poor little niece into thinking she is named Diya.
Priya's doctor, Dr. Catherine Hill stopped by on Monday morning to check up on Priya and when the talk turned to names, she strongly preferred Aanika over Amelie. Her reason ? She was probably thinking Emily when we said Amelie, and there are just too many Emily's (she was the eighth Cathy in her class, she elaborated). And that drove the nail home just a little further.
Later that night, Papa, Mom and I set down to finalize the name as I was filling up the application for SSN and registration of birth forms. It seem only Papa needed convincing since Aanika had polled ahead with almost everyone, and both of us also really liked the name, and she looked just like a little Aanika to us ! So we googled all meanings, statistics and variations of Aanika for several hours. And in the end, with some fair amount of convincing from Mom and all favorable results from Google, Papa eventually gave his blessings to the name Aanika.
And just then and there, I called Priya at the hospital, and the name Aanika was officially finalized. I filled up the forms with that name before anyone has any other bright ideas and submitted the forms the next day to the birth registrar at the hospital - and she was formally and informally, offically and legally... Aanika !
A few days later, after some more googling and as the name Aanika sank into our minds and heart, I realized what a good choice this had been. It has ethnic Indian roots, and in Hindi it means, "Goddess Durga", one of the prominent goddesses of Hindu religion and also, "very beautiful". Interestingly it has language roots in several western languages, and it means "grace" or "graceful" or "gracious" in Spanish, Hebrew, Dutch, Czech and Scandanavian. Its roots can be traced to the name "Hannah" and its variations in a large number of European and other languages, which means "favor" or "grace". Further research revealed that it even has African roots with several meanings such as "smart, beautiful, child of god" and, "sweet-faced" specifically of Hausa origin. A variation "Anyika" means “she is beautiful” in Vai. And I wonder if it means anything in Japanese.
Speaking of pronounciations, although the most common written form for this name is "Anika", and despite some variations in pronounciation like "a-nee-ka" and "ann-ni-ka", the one that we really liked was "AH-ni-ka" (with a long A), . So we decided to go for the written form "Aanika" to avoid any confusion with pronounciation (and hopefully save her a few headaches when she grows up) and also because this variation was quite uncommon and unique.
And thats how the name Aanika came to be !
posted by kmd at 3:04 AM
5 Comments:
First of all congrats on the arrival of Aanika. Truly nice name, one must say. But you didn't tell us from where you got the idea of this name! I know what it is like finalizing the name of a baby! 3 years ago, we all were breaking our heads to get THE right name for my newly born nephew and finally after loads of searches and loads of convincing of my parents we zeroed in on 'Ojaswit'.
You have written the whole thing very nicely. Congrats once again!
Regards,
Abhishek
Tata Consultancy Services
Hyderabad
hey thats quite sweet. i was blog surfing / blog hopping - when i chanced upon this story. my little daughter (she turns 1 this month is called anika - and my older daughter (just turned 3) is called diya!!! we googled around for'anika' too last eyar and found out exactly what you found!!!
d
Abhishek
Thanks for visiting the page and leaving your comments. To be quite honest in answering your question, we chanced upon this name by pure luck while pouring over hundreds of baby name websites over the internet. I am glad to see that even you and your family were successful in picking a truly unique name for your nephew.
hey d,
I cant believe that your daughters are named Anika and Diya ! Talk about coincidences. I am glad to find someone else who liked the name so much as to name their own daughter with the same name !
me too!
d
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