Sabina

We had a hard time coming up with a name when I was pregnant. Both my partner and I have things we dislike about our names. My name is so common that on my childhood soccer team one year there were four Amy's. I wanted my child to have a name that would not be that common. I also didn't want a name that would be hard to spell or say. Having a surname that is often misspelled and mispronounced I did not want my child to have a given name that had those issues. My partner has disliked his name because it is a diminutive of another name and he worries that he will not be taken seriously by people he does not know.

We spent evening walks every day talking about the possibilities. Thinking about what we wanted for our baby and how we could give her a name that would be easy to say, easy to spell, unique enough, but not too unique. I also wanted to give her a name that signaled strength and power to me. We got closer and closer to the due date and nothing yet. The options we were discussing were still not right. My partner was finishing his first book about Roman Republican history. Part of his content was about the ethnic groups that surrounded early Rome. He was in the process about writing the Sabines and the Etruscans. A week or so before she was born he was telling me about how the Roman stereotype of the Sabines was that they were mountain people who were tough and honest. Later Romans sometimes names their daughters Sabina to signal Sabine heritage. We found out baby girl's name. When Sabina was five we took her to Italy as a part of one of my partner's research trips and she delighted the people we met by marveling that there was a part of Italy names for her.

-Amy, Suffern, NY, USA