Zara Octavia Rose was born January 27th 2019 at 11:52 am.
We thought super long and hard about that name. We wanted to be an original name with great meaning. It had to look good on a resume (We do want Zara to have a job one day). I also wanted a super flexible name; everyone at some point hates their name and wants to change it. I wanted as much material as possible for our small person to work with.
Octavia was the easy name. Stephan and I started talking to each other because of Octavia Buttler the first well known Black Woman Sci-Fi authors. If you don't know her you should get to know her.
When we first met at P&G in our first real conversation we found out we both read Sci-Fi. He immediately asked me if I knew who Octavia Butler was and I was surprised that this random White guy knew who she was. I also loved the name Octavia for the latin roots and for the nickname Tavi. Tavi means good in Hebrew.
One great name down, but how about another one. I love names with Z in them. My original choice was Lizazi - which means sunshine in one of the Namibian languages. It was actually the sir-name of one of the teachers I taught with. Stephan was not going for it. Zoe is too common. We looked for other awesome Black Women role models. Zora Neale Hurston has always been another of my favorite authors and anthropologists.
I really liked the concept of sunshine and was happy to find out that Zara means star by its Arabic origin. It also means seed in Hebrew or princess in Russian. So many good name adaptations. It also is similar to her father's name. In that Stephan was actually named for Stephen King; it was just a slightly different turn on the name.
So now we had two names and we toyed with the order. If it was Octavia Zora she could go by OZ or Dorothy (the name of one of my best friends mother and an amazing person) or Elphaba. If Zora Octavia she could go by Zo or Zoey if she wanted too.
But this will likely be my only child. So why only two names? Once talking to my Sister Mychelle she mentioned the name Rose if a female infant. Rose just felt right. Aside from being in a song (I've always wanted to have my name in a song)
It is also the name of my aunt. The aunt who literally gave me the world. There will be a whole post about this later if I can ever finish it.
The last bit is the Sir name. Stephan and I decided not to change our last names when we got married. But we have called ourself the Shegoodwin Household for ages. Therefore it made sense that Zara have the Shegoodwin name. Though apparently lots of people were surprised that you can give your child a name that neither parent have.
So that's it; how we named our newborn. Hopefully there's enough variety that Zara feels comfortable throughout her journey as Zara Octavia Rose Shegoodwin or: Zee, Zo, Zoe, Zora, Tavi, Rosie, Zors or good old Mixtape.
