She finally has a name!!! It took us a week, but we finally agreed on a name for our new baby/ daughter/ sister. And she is now called (drum roll please…)
ARIELLA
She is named after my great Aunt (my father’s mother’s sister) who left Hungary before the Holocaust for New Jersey, with her husband Jules. They never had any children. Her full name was Arabella, but we always knew her as Ella. Hence Ariella.
The name is a female version of Ariel, which is taken from Yeshiya chapter 29 verse 1 (and 2) and is a name for Jerusalem. According to the king James authorised version the prophet says “Ariel, the city where David dwelt! add ye year to year”
הוֹי אֲרִיאֵל אֲרִיאֵל, קִרְיַת חָנָה דָוִד; סְפוּ שָׁנָה עַל-שָׁנָה, חַגִּים יִנְקֹפוּ.
Literally it means the lion of G-d, as used by Sylvia Plath in her poem of the same name:
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees! —The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
Shakespeare, in the Tempest, described Ariel as an airy spirit.
And finally, according to Proctor and Gamble Ariel provides ‘longer lasting freshness’
