What's the cutest thing you've ever seen?
Kindergarten pillowcase race! They were like little bunnies hopping across the floor in baby-sized sacks. Hop-hop-hop! Hop-hop-hop! So, so adorable. Some couldn't get the hang of it and kept getting their feet tangled inside and tripping. Others reached the end, and just stood there confused, like ...now what? Why are they making us do this? Hehe. I know kid, sometimes grown-ups make you do senseless things like hopping around in pillowcases. Trust me, you look ridiculous(ly cute), and it'll come in handy later on when you're trying to pass a highway alcohol test. See, watch, I can hop for miles in a pillowcase without falling! Tally-ho!
Last Saturday, we held a carnival-type event in the large gym for all the Kindergarten and preschool students. I wore my Halloween costume and clowned around with the kids, took candid pictures, painted faces, and finally met many of my kids' parents, not just their drivers. I found out that one of my Mohammeds- the really intelligent, skinny one with huge deer eyes- is actually neither Kurdish, nor Iraqi- he is Algerian! I also learned that Liya's mother's name is Jwan, with a soft French “J” sound, and it means “pining, as for a lover”- literally. Isn't that lovely?
The Kurds have an interesting naming tradition. Like hippies who give their kids literal names like Summer, Rain, and Flower, instead of names that just remotely mean those things, the Kurds christen their babies with literal names (that, or else with the usual Muslim names like Mohammed, Ali, Ahmed, etc.). Jala's baby's is called Hema (the Kurdish word for “midnight”); there is a girl called Frishta (translation: “angel”) in my grade 2 class; Balkwareen, the girl I met in Duhok, means something like “falling leaves”; Diyar means “clear, vivid”; Jotiar means “farmer” (not sure why you'd want to name your baby Farmer!); There's a terror-child in grade 1 called “Mountain” (Chia); a girl named Shirin, which means “sweet”; Shano, who is the splitting image of her father, the school accountant, means “drama/play”; her two younger sisters are Tablo (”painting”, like the French tableau) and Savo (”soap”- another strange one); Zozan, one of the Kurdish-American teachers here, is the Kurdish word for “Meadow”.
As a kid, I remember doing the girly thing and browsing forever through the list of baby names in the middle of my mom's huge English-Korean dictionary, wondering things like: why would you give your kid a name that means “lame girl” (Claudia) or “bitter” (Mary)? Anyway, when I was young, my favorite names were always changing with the wind, but as I grow older, my preferences have become more steadfast, and in particular, the list of favorite names has held steady over the last few years, tending toward the poetic hippie/Kurdish tradition of names that conjure up immediate mental images of a beautiful summer's day, or an open field, or a little stream winding through a forest.
Of all the Kurdish names I've come across so far, the one that translates as “Midnight” is probably my favorite. It's so mysterious...so “dark angel”. But I also like the one that means "Meadow", just because I like the English equivalent, and Shano because it's against the grain, ie: not in line with the usual nature theme. According to Niroj (”New Day”), the prevalence of nature-y names among the Kurds reflects their longtime nomadic existence. Like Bedouins, they would just wander from pasture to pasture with their sheep, going where the grass grows.
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