Saturday, November 8, 2008

What's in a title? What's in a name?

We've been trying to think of a clever domain name for our site for a while. So many adoption journals have "journey" or "venture" as part of them, as we did at our original site. And, as with everything, I've analyzed the names to death. bizousblog? journeytobizou? busyasbiz? ourlittlegem? voyagerthroughlife? I give up, for now. I'm going with one of my first thoughts: thephorondas, a play on our family name but using the spelling of "pho" the Vietnamese chicken noodle soup that is their national dish and whose name is pronounced the same as the "Fawh" in "Foronda." So there it is. It combines our name with something Vietnamese and food, one of our great passions. You can see in the ABOUT US column where "Bizou" comes from. Beatrice is the name we have chosen for our daughter because it means "blessing" and "voyager through life," along with being my mother's middle name and Anthony's paternal aunt's name. She has both history and meaning in this name which also reflects both of her parents' heritages, as well as the culture that continues to influence Hanoi, "the Paris of Asia." We will keep her current Vietnamese name, which we love and seriously considered keeping for her entire name, as her two middle names, so her initials will be B.M.H.F. And, for the record, we don't pronounce it BEE-TRISS, like the 8th grade nun who was the bane of my brother's existence but, rather, with a subtle middle syllable...Be-a-triss. Of course she already has many nicknames in the family, namely Bizou, The Biz (pronounced "bees"), B.B., B., Baby Bea, ZuZu, and I'm sure the list will multiply once we actually meet her an her personality unfolds.

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