Friday, November 07, 2008

The Name, Explained

Risanna: You won't find this one in the baby name books. So we made it up. And, since we made it up, we get to say what it means. Risanna is a combination of the Spanish risa (laughter) and Anna/'ana, (grace, gracious/[he] answers) so any way you parse it (gracious laughter, He answers with laughter, etc.) ...is fine with us.

Pepper: We needed something fun to balance the seriousness and elegance of Risanna. It sounded right, fits with our tastes, and makes a good nickname. My mother asked if I wasn't asking for trouble with such a hot, fiery name. I say no. Naming your daughter "Constance" or "Chastity" is asking for it.

Lyn: Lyn is Deborah's middle name. It means "waterfall," but even Deborah didn't know that, so it wasn't really a factor. Maybe the waterfall will balance out the peppers...

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Laughing peppers under a waterfall? ;)

Andy said...

Laughing graceful peppers under a waterfall. :-)

lightpaths said...

I actually think "risanna" was in the name book we have (and found galahad in).

I think it's great you re-make it up :)

Jonadab said...

Two middle names? Well, she'll run into a lot of situations where she has to leave one of them out, but I suppose that's not such a very big deal.

Risanna, though it's not particularly common, is an existing name, as a quick Google search reveals. (I was pretty sure I'd seen it before anyway, though I can't recall the details.)

Pepper is alright, but it's probably best you stayed away from Banana as a name. Just saying.

Lyn, of course, is very traditional, especially as a middle name, so that's a nice counterbalance for the, umm, less traditional portions.

I assume she also bears the name Kerr?

Sarah DeSalvo said...

From what I can remember, all your kids have 2 middle names, right? Thanks for the explanation on the name - I think it's beautiful! I am just wondering, though, do you pronounce it like "banana" or the other way (sorry I can't think of a word that rhymes with "ah-na" :-)

lovemyname said...

Risanna is my name. So how about u take this stupid story down and check out the facts before u claim to make it up. My father said the samething that he made it up an i was born in 88 lots of people make stuff up with out relizing its not actually new. In my case i have 2 family members names he combined to "make" mine Risi and Anna.

Anonymous said...

I did my research; at the time, searches returned no results for the name. I've since met three other people with named Risanna, all of them more gracious than this.