소라 바다

Well, we've finally decided on a name for our little girl! The title is her first and middle name in Korean. It's was definitely harder than naming our biological boys. A lot more things to consider. For example...

Bada was named by her biological mother. It is quite possibly the only thing she will ever receive from her. I hope not...but regardless, it's special.

Is Bada too unusual? In other words, is it something she may get made fun of for in school? It's possible that we will be living overseas, but still, she will already have difficulties and we don't want that to be another thing.

Should we really change her name? She will have lived with it for 8 months. Are we being unkind to change it? It's not like she's a puppy dog or something. She's had a life as Bada.

We wanted to name her a Korean name. We already had some picked out before we got the referral. Most Korean names are not pronounceable by Americans so we sort of assumed that we'd HAVE to change her name. We had a short list of Korean names that could easily be pronounced and accepted here. But we also thought we'd give her an "American" middle name. But that would mean getting rid of Bada. Were we willing to do that? Did we want two Korean names?

Our kids don't have typical American names. I mean, Micaiah Soren - nothing American about that! Did we really need to worry about giving her one?

We asked the boys what they thought. Wow, was that a mistake. :-) We gave them a few names to choose from, including Bada and asked which ones they liked best. Caiah insisted that her name was Bada and refused to pick a different one. Orin said he was going to call her "stinky peep." Not sure where he got that one from but I'm assuming he's meaning to say "Stinky Pete!"

So, after lots of discussion, and changing our minds back and forth quite a few times her name is going to be Sora. It is pronounced just like it looks. The 'or' is pounced like the word 'or'. In Asia, because of accents, the 'r' would be pronounced more like a mix of a 'r' and 'l'. It is a name used in Korea, Japan and I think China. I'm not sure exactly where it originated but possibly Japan. In Japanese it means "sky" or "heaven." In Koren it means "shell". Bada will be her middle name. We just couldn't get rid of it. At first we know we'll call her Bada. After a while we'll start working in Sora. But either way, Bada will be a special name we use for her throughout her life. And you never know, Caiah may never give in and call her Sora (he is pretty stubborn). She may always be Bada to him.