THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

Everything is a symbol. The names of the two girls who introduced Obama last week – Zea and Luna – speak of conscious rebellion against norms.

“Zea” I take for a feminization of Zeus, the etymon of which is an Indo-European word with the generic meaning of “a god.” Thus Zea is a double-whammy. It feminizes the King of the Gods and it semi-sacralizes the name-bearer.  “Luna” is obvious; she is the moon under her Latin title. But notice the inconsistency: Zea is Greek and there is a Greek equivalent of Luna, namely Selena, which is a female name that one sometimes encounters. However, Selena is for most people merely a name, without a connotation; whereas Luna has a widely known celestial connotation.  That implies that the girl was named especially to link her to the celestial object – and probably also to lunar cycles, female cycles, and assorted other themes from Our Bodies, Ourselves. Unfortunately, the name Luna so closely associates with the adjective lunatic, that it is difficult to hear the former without thinking of the latter.  The name-bearer will have to add that small problem to all the other problems that will afflict her life.

Quirky, non-traditional given-names belong to the de-civilizing process.  They imply a specific rejection of the normative cognomen-regime, under which Westerners have given their children what are called Christian names.  (Even Germanic names like Eric and Richard became thoroughly Christianized during the Middle Ages, as did Celtic names like Owen and Douglas.)  The names Zea and Luna are ridiculous because they are tendentious – like Bolshevik given-names on the order of “Revol” (for men) and “Volutsia” (for women), both from the Russian revolutsia or “revolution,” which some poor souls had to bear during their lifetimes.  The composer Revol Bunin hated his given name.  I wonder, what Frank Zappa’s daughter, “Moon-Unit,” thinks of her given name in her adulthood?

— Comments —-

Hannon writes:

Zea is also the genus of corn (Zea mays). This derives from the ancient Greek for some common cereal, probably spelt, according to L. H. Bailey. This seems a more likely origin for the girl’s name, with all it’s rich multicultural intonations, than the feminizing of Zeus.

Jewel writes:

I chose old-fashioned names for my girls, two of which could be considered pagan, but not neo-pagan, in the feminist, Wiccan sense of the word.

Emily and Julia, Latin names meaning, Industrious and Youthful – my identical twins’ names, aptly chosen, since both embody the meaning of those words, especially Julia.

Mary and Rachel. Mary means ‘bitter’…and she was a difficult child, strong willed and irksome in the extreme, but has mellowed out since marriage and motherhood.

Rachel. Ewe. She is our youngest, and of the four, the sweetest lamb.

Fred Owens writes:

Naming your child — it’s the only moment, in all two decades of childrearing, when you have complete authority of your child’s fate.

We named our son Eugene, which is Greek for well-born. Eugene was his great uncle’s name.

We named our daughter Eva, which is Hebrew, named after a family friend, and named after the Mother-of-us-all.

So I have one Greek and one Jew. And, as I said, I tried to raise them right, but mostly it was beyond my control. The only thing I could give them was a good name. The rest was up to them.

Laura writes:

Naming your child — it’s the only moment, in all two decades of childrearing, when you have complete authority of your child’s fate.

That’s of an overstatement. Let’s say, naming a child is one of many moments when one influences one’s child’s fate.

Jeff W. writes:

The rulers of the gods of Greece and Rome were Zeus and his wife Hera. Zeus was the king of the gods. Hera was the goddess of women and marriage. By naming this girl Zea, her parent, to me, is signalling a desire that Zeus should be overthrown and that a female Zea should rule in his place.

A question arises: If Zea usurps the role of Zeus, what is to become of the roles of Hera or Hestia, the goddess of home and hearth? It appears to me that these lesbians’ usurping spirit is also at war against Hera and Hestia. They want to destroy anything that is sacred about the role of women or about marriage, and they also want to destroy anything that is sacred about the traditional home and hearth. How would these lesbians, for example, react to college-level courses for women in home economics? I expect they would demand that they be immediately eliminated. The lesbians want to destroy Hera and Hestia so that they can rule unchallenged.

By attempting to elevate the usurper Zea and a female moon goddess Luna, these lesbians display a disordered spiritual state that is at war with masculine rule, the sacred role of women, the sacredness of marriage, the importance of home and hearth, and the special role of women in making good homes for their families.

As a Christian, I try not to be ruled by any of these spirits, but by God alone. Yet these inferior spiritual forces are always with us, and they need to be recognized and properly subjected to God’s rule. A desire to replace Zeus with Zea is female will-to-power gone mad, and that urge will continue to produce acts of madness until it is somehow brought into subjection.

Mr. Bertonneau responds:

Hannon is probably right: Zea is more likely named after the grain than after the god Zeus by way of a nominal feminization.  But whether Zea is named after Zeus or after a variety of corn or perhaps after the ancient Corn Mother, Jeff W’s commentary still fully applies.

Numerous pagan names, including names of deities, migrated through Greek, Latin, and the other European languages to become part of the catalogue of Christian given-names.  (I had a cousin on my mother’s side named Thor.)  My sister is named Denise, which derives from the Greek Dionysia, a feminization of Dionysus; but there was a Saint Dionysus, or Dionysius, between the Greek god and people named Dennis or Denise.  In any case, no one knows that Denise derives from Dionysus, so no one thinks of it that way, and no one names the child that with a tendency in mind.  (If you told all this to my parents, you would have gotten a blank look in response.)  My name, Thomas, is Hebrew, or perhaps even Egyptian, but likewise no one thinks of the Hebrew word for twin or of the Egyptian god Tammuz in connection with the name Tom, so again there is no tendency.

Mostly, Western people do not name their children after gods.  An exception is the Iberian habit of naming first-born male children after the savior, Jesus.  I have been thinking about this.  I do not speak with authority but only on the basis of an educated guess.  I would conjecture that the name Jesus became common in Spanish and Portuguese during the Reconquista, as a deliberate response to the Muslim habit of giving boy-children the name Mohammed.

Jay from Goshen writes:

I would never have been able to scrutinize with such clarity as Thomas Bertonneau the murky, inchoate thoughts I had upon reading the names Zea and Luna — which is why I read your blog.

Those names struck me as very odd indeed. I also think that having two fatherless girls at the white house in proximity to Father’s Day was a vicious slap. Obama disgusts me more as every day passes.

It so happens I met a lesbian couple with a child. Under the circumstances, one abides by norms and doesn’t want to pry. But I was so curious, I had to ask which woman was the “birth mother.” (I gave in to that extent. Except in the case of a legitimately adopted child, putting the word “birth” before “mother” is superfluous.) Uncomfortable silence, before the fact was revealed. I wanted to ask who the father was but I dared not. Now I wish I had.

I have actually seen websites devoted to the new etiquette of “same-sex parenting.” I say: Politeness be damned, I’m asking the questions. Pardon my language.

I suggest that all the readers of this blog, and all decent people everywhere, not be polite. Ask questions. Be pleasant but ask what is in your heart to ask. Who’s the mother? Who’s the father? Do you intend to tell the child the facts of his/her life and at what point? How do you deal with the fact that only a man and a woman can create a baby?

Jay adds:

Do you notice the way the public is carefully prepared to accept everything relating to homosexuality? They always begin with women, because women are simply less threatening than men. (No need to elaborate.) Remember that imitation VJ day kiss? Lesbians. Then they had two burly Marines snogging, but only after everyone’s defenses had been destroyed by the lesbians.

The White House knew that if there had been two boys being raised by two men, there would have been a disgusted reaction, even in this beaten-down brain dead joke of a country. So they displayed two juvenile females being raised by lesbians, knowing that juvenile females always evoke a protective response.

I hate Obama.

 Laura writes:

Yes, they never would have done this with two men.

Nick writes:

I thought of you and homosexual adoption while walking down the street the other day. I used to live in Northampton, where lesbians with babies are, of course, trés chic, the indispensable fashion accessory that everyone must have. One day after listening to a five year old shriek through most of my breakfast, I turned to the parents and said, “Do I have to suffer through this for my entire meal or can I enjoy my pancakes in peace?” They left, called me a vulgar name and waited for me outside in a vain attempt to shame me. I just got on my bike and left. It strikes me as exactly the type of thing that happens when your parents are more interested in being part of a trend than they are in having a family, when a child becomes a statement.

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