Our child arrived a week ago, at 6 pounds 6 ounces on 6/6. On Friday, we introduced him to his grandparents via Skype, showing them his name on an iPad. It looked like this:

We’ve been home for a few days. Yesterday Taavi looked — and looked! — like this:

I don’t know what Taavi looked like while listening to me play the piano last night. If indeed he was listening, he heard bits and pieces of Medtner’s “Dance Tale”, Op. 48 No. 1, and then the Brahms Intermezzo, Op. 117 No. 1 I had hummed to him in the cocoon.

My sister and both grandmae have held him. Grandpae and Bekki’s brothers will soon. Everyone is happy and healthy. About the name:

Taavi

Finnish/Estonian variant of Hebrew David, “beloved”.

• We like the sound
• We like the meaning
• We like the Hebrew connection
• We like how Germans and Israelis and Americans will be able to pronounce it
• After a couple days with him, we both independently decided he’s Taavi (and not the other names we were thinking about)
• Amitai likes being able to vaguely associate the name with Medtner (of Livonian descent, Germans who settled in the Baltics, of which Estonia is one)
• Sounds phonetically related to “Amitai” and “Bekki”
• The first “a” is in memory of our friend Andrew

Lua

Portuguese, “moon”.

• Born under a big moon (waxing gibbous), and he went home on the full moon
• We like the sound
• We like mixing languages for our citizen of the world
• We like the reminder to look beyond our world
• We like the association with our love and memory of another very special animal, Lunar
• We like the association with our Haskell, by virtue of both being programming languages
• The Lua programming language is included in NetBSD, an open-source project which led Amitai to friends, Columbia, employment, and ultimately Bekki
• Amitai has even written a little Lua

Taavi Lua Schleier

• We like the sounds together
• The names and initials aren’t obviously embarrassing
• It’s unique enough
• It means enough
• It reflects our heritages enough
• It will sound like a grownup when he’s a grownup

More nice properties observed after the fact

• Taavi:
  • Abba: תביא (ta-VEE, emphasis on second syllable) means “bring” (imperative), which is what the doctors needed to do
  • Abba: תו (tav, “musical note”)
  • Abba: “Tavi” is a Hebrew name these days apparently
• Lua:
  • Bekki: “Mondschleier” (”Mond” is German for “moon”) is the halo around the moon
• Whole name:
  • Nathan: TLS means “secure” (Transport Layer Security, encryption for data in motion)

If you think of another reason this is a nice name, please pass it along.

For my Lean/Agile/XP/systems/org-thinker readers

Taavi embodies the famous Peter Senge adage “People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.” But he’s getting used to it.

For Taavi to understand someday

More photos

photos.theschleiers.com/taavi