First snow of the year inspires wintery moniker
WHAT’S YOUR NAME?
The backstory: Their daughter was due Dec. 31st. When she didn’t arrive on time, they nixed their plan to name her Eve Anni, after both New Year’s Eve and Anni — as in the French année, and also a beloved grandmother.
The backdrop: After she did arrive Jan. 6, 2011, Gilliane Russell remembers she and husband Steve “looking out the window and snuggling with her, and it was snowing heavily at that point, it was the first of the year and it snowed all day — thick, fairy tale snowflakes.”
Eve Anni she wasn’t, but the Toronto couple did still want to honour Steve’s heritage. “His grandfather is Welsh and we love all Welsh names, and we thought of something to do with snow.”
They found Aneira (an-ee-rah, and, as Gilliane explains, pronounced “like Keira”). “Eira is Welsh for snow, so we tied it in with Anni and snow, and it was just a perfect fit.”
They also incorporated early favourite Eve as a middle name.
Anni was the name of Steve’s grandmother, and Annie was Gilliane’s great-grandmother.
The couple decided against another place name, after calling their first-born Georgian Lima Russell. (She’s named after Georgian Bay, where the couple has strong family ties, and where they married. The two were in Lima, Peru when they found out they were expecting her.)
Both Georgian, now 5, and Aneira were born at home, “in the exact same place and, again, a morning baby.”
Georgian goes by her full name; Aneira, however, is firm on calling herself Anni.
“We just decided to go with a more sentimental choice, and draw in family roots and family ties, and still have a little bit of fun,” explains Gilliane, creator of the Wooli line of soft toy boxes for children.
Husband Steve is an award-winning photographer at the Star, “and he was joking that he might have a front-page photo, even if he was off work, if we had the first baby of the New Year. “Because there’s such an emphasis in all culture about New Year’s, we couldn’t let that go. It was just fun to definitely tie in the fact that she was due on that day.”