what's in a name

A little bit more about our daughter…

She was born on 4 February 2011 at 11:38 pm in Subang Jaya, Selangor. She weighed 3.43 kg at birth. I was expecting a bigger baby based on my weekly check-ups. I even had a pelvic scan done via MRI at week 38 to measure the size of my pelvis. But in the end, she was a fairly sized baby. So it just goes to show that the doctor’s estimation was merely just that – an estimation.

Choosing her name was a breeze to us. As with most things in my life, if I am adamant about something, I’ll just stick to it. I’ve always wanted to name my daughter Sofea (although I was open to suggestions about the spelling). She is named after her late maternal great-grandmother, whom I was very close to and meant the world to me.

Some source states that Maya means ‘princess’ while some says it means ‘nature, wealth, power’. My husband and I both fell in love with the name Maya straight away. We’re not into a particular alphabet or that she has to have our initials etc…so we’re pretty open to anything and everything under the sun provided that it has a good meaning, of course. We could’ve stopped at Maya Sofea but then we just HAD to add Arisya. Hehe. Somehow it felt incomplete. To us lah, at least. Arisya is derived from the word ‘arasy’…which means ‘highness’ (ketinggian).

So that’s the story behind her name. We’re very happy with her name, we call her Maya or as she is more fondly known now as ‘baby Maya’. I think the name fits her! She is exactly the Maya that we imagined her to be. We waited for 7 days before we officially registered her name – you know, just to see if the name suits the baby or not. A very simple tahnik ceremony was done and the next day, Maya had her birth certificate ready! Looking at your own child’s birth cert is probably another milestone to be noted down in one of the chapters of your life. I mean, before this, WE were asking from our parents for our birth cert for school purposes and now, our name is written on that piece of paper as PARENTS. Before we know it, Maya would be asking for us to photocopy her birth cert to give to her teacher. Huwaaa…not so fast baby! ps; Mummy drama queen.

Tahnik ceremony