What's in a Name?

When Mike and I first began to discuss names for Lucine it was July. We were out at his field research site in the middle of eastern Nevada. Since his study area encompasses hundreds of square miles we do a lot (A LOT) of driving. We were driving up Hwy 278 one sunny and hot afternoon when the topic of names came up. At this point we were pretty positive it was a girl.

The conversation goes something like this:

"So, what d'ya think we should name the wee one?" I ask. "Should we be cruel and name her something like Hilda? If we permanently alienate her then we might have more time to ourselves in our retirement." What can I say, too many hours in the Great Basin desert sun gives one a twisted sense of humor.

"We could name her something that relates to the project, or the place where she was made."

"Sofa?"

He laughs. "Or Centrocercus. Centrocercus europhasianus Atamian," he says with a quizzical grin. The prospect that we name our child the Latin name for sage grouse seems a bit over the top. But I like the idea of naming her after something in the natural world. We run through a series of names based on what we see around us. Aquila. Lupine. Bovine. Sage.

"We could always name her Artemesia," I add, referring to the Big Sage whizzing by on either side of the highway. "Artemesia Tridentata Atamian."

We both giggle. "There's definitely a lot of sage in our lives during her beginnings," Mike says, still smiling.

"Maybe we should save this conversation for when we're not so hungry," I add.

* * *

Nine months later, after lists and lists and lists of names that we chose and then threw out, we decided on Lucine Elizabeth. The first honors Mike's Armenian hertiage and the moon. The second honors my mother's family. What I didn't realize, or remember, until yesterday is that the genus Artemesia is named after Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon, because of its silvery foliage. I guess in naming her we gave her both a connection to the moon and to the Great Basin desert she was born in. When I think of this bit of information it makes me incredibly happy. A sense of rightness, of confirmation comes over me. We chose her name as much on instinct as anything else. There were three finalists for names on the night of her birth. And when I first held her in my arms I looked at her, and I knew her name was Lucine. It just seemed right. But before I said anything I looked at Mike.

"What do you think?"

He looked long and hard at her and said, "Lucine."

"Glad we agree." Though we'd narrowed it down to three, our individual choice was not something we'd discussed before that moment.

Lucine, Moonbeam, Artemis, Artemesia. I have a master's in English, so natually the origins of words, and the connections made based on those, interest me. So I pulled out one of my books on Greek mythology. When I read the entry for the goddess Artemis I broke down laughing (you'll see why).

The physical description of Artemis in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Mythology is worth mentioning. "She was tall and imposing, a queen with a beautiful face and golden curls. She was proud of her shape and took great care of it, and because of this she made sure she kept her virginity."

. . . all I could think was, Isn't this every father's dream?!

Artemis is known as the goddess of the wilderness, the hunt and wild animals, fertility and childbirth. Another flattering description paints her as, "a friend to mortals, [who] dances through the countryside in her silver sandals giving her divine protection to the wild beasts, particularly the very young. She rides her silver chariot across the sky and shoots her arrows of silver Moonlight to the earth below." Although I'm not crazy about the idea of her reeking vengence on "those virgins who give into love," I think the connection is a nice one.

When I took Luci out to the field site with us at about four months of age, I crushed sage leaves near her nose so she could smell the predominant plant in the Great Basin. It's the smell I most associate with my time at Mike's study site. It's what I would smell when I took my jeans off at night. What I smelled every time I got out of the truck to open another gate in the field fencing. It's what I was wading through when I was first preganant but didn't know it yet.

I had no idea about Artemis then. But I still wonder if Luci will remember that smell when she gets older.