Naming the Wondertwins

Well, this blog is with reference to my little dudes, Elixir & Elijaz. For those of you not in the know, the naming process was a real brand project for me. (If you've heard this before, feel free to skip this whole posting.) Anyway, below was my step-by-step process before we narrowed it down to Elixir & Elijaz.

The parameters and objectives
This was the background: we knew we were expecting twin boys so DH wanted the babies to carry a 'Muhammad'; whatever comes after that, he left it up to me. I wanted the boys to have the letter 'E' - after me (although my real name starts with a 'Z' but I didn't want them to be called on last in class etc, coz I went through all that - I was ALWAYS last).

Additionally, the names should be of Arabic origin, and should of course mean something good. Oh, and a unique name would be a plus, not really a must-have, but a good-to-have nevertheless.

The final requirement was, the names that we chose had to suit the soul of each boy. Now that, we could only do once the kids were safely in our arms.

The challenges
So, I thought by narrowing it down to 1 letter, the choices would be simpler to make. I was wrong. To start off, finding an Arabic word that began with the letter 'E' was pretty much impossible, because Arabic doesn't have an 'E' equivalent. I scoured books, the net, but my daily work-to-do list was longer than the names I had collected. Finally, I resolved to looking at words that began with 'I' or 'A', and then play around with the phonetics later. Well this proved to work, because only then did the list began looking like a list.

Linguistic checks
Right, like I actually did a real, full linguistics check! I just stroke off the names which sounded ambiguous to me. For example, the name 'Esif' was one that I really liked, which meant forgiveness, but I wasn't about to have kids call him 'As if...'! Or 'Ebriz' meaning pure gold just beckons his classmates to call him 'sabun breeze'. Here's a sample of the spreadsheet that I worked on...

Englebert or Einstein?
Hmm...both are accomplished men in their own right. Tempting, but the names didn't fit the Arabic criteria. Actually, there were a lot of nice names on my list, but we wanted to find a good pair; i.e. both names had to complement each other.

Meeting of the minds
Let's put it this way. The shortlist of names that we came up with together was indeed a short list, because we could only agree on a handful of them. Furthermore, some of them didn't even pair up nicely. The silver lining was - the list got narrower. Much narrower. In fact, we were down to 2 pairs of names. 2 'E' names and 2 'Z' names. Ha ha, so much for all the research done (but I still have the list, you never know, a name may shout out differently when the boys beckon for more siblings...)

So, it boiled down to the following:

1. Elixir - From Mediaeval Latin elixir, from Arabic الإكسير (al-’iksīr), from Ancient Greek ξήριον (“‘medicinal powder’”), from ξηρός (“‘dry’”), it is a liquid that is believed to cure all ills and give eternal life. The Arabic term came from the works of Geber, aka Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan, who was a prominent Islamic alchemist, pharmacist, philosopher, astronomer, and physicist. He has also been referred to as "the father of Arab chemistry" by Europeans. Jabir emphasised systematic experimentation, and did much to free alchemy from superstition and turn it into a science. It was theorised that by rearranging the qualities of one metal, based on their sulfur/mercury content, a different metal would result. (Burckhardt, p. 29). This theory appears to have originated the search for al-iksir, the elusive elixir that would make this transformation possible - which in European alchemy became known as the philosopher's stone.
2. Eijaz - Variant of the Arabic name E'jaaz which means Miracle, Astonishment, Inimitability, of wondrous nature.
   
3. Zarif - Elegant, Witty,Nice, Graceful, Humourous. We would have made the name a bit more 'sexy' by spelling it as 'Zerryf' or something like that...
4. Zafir - Victorious. If this was the name selected, I wanted to have it spelt as Zephyr, which is Greek for 'West Wind'.

Now happy with our shortlist, all we had to do was wait for the boys to come out...


Post-Natal Naming
The boys were safely born, but we still were undecided as to which names to give, coz we liked both pairs very much. However, after a few days (and nights!) with the boys, it became quite apparent that the selection should lean towards the 'E's. But my DH wasn't convinced with the name 'Eijaz'. He felt that it was too short, and didn't complement 'Elixir' which obviously had the 'x' factor in more ways than one. Also, he didn't want people to think that we were naming the boy after a well-known Malaysian architect. Let the record show that I'm the one who loves the name 'Eijaz'.

Anyway, in addressing my DH's concerns, I used my very basic Form-3-MRSM-Arabic-knowledge, and figured that I could put an 'El' meaning 'the' to precede 'Eijaz', which should mean 'The Miracle' right? Well, regardless, I'm convinced it is anyway, and DH thought it was more balanced now - 'Elixir' and 'Elijaz', with 'Ixir' and 'Eijaz' for short.

So who got 'Elixir' - instantly we knew it would go to T1 (Twin 1 as labelled on their baby tag) coz he was very much the attention seeker, befitting the 'x' factor. And 'Elijaz' suited T2 to a T, coz he was the quite one, almost serene and wondrous-like.

MyKids
Happy with our decision, we then announced to family, friends and sundry - mostly with an SMS text message, that the boys would be called 'Muhammad Elixir' and 'Muhammad Elijaz'.

Though not by design, the both of them collectively actually means our "Miracle Cure", pretty fitting, don'tcha think?

And Papa was now able to go to JPN to register the boys' MyKids...

Thank yous
To Achen, whose books I guiltily still keep - still in good condition, i don't know how it missed the bag of stuff i passed on to you the last time, but I shall return them to you.
To Zaila, for being the sounding board, I tried out a few names with her, and she gave me her RM2,000 opinion worth...