I feel like the blog deserves a wee post explaining the reason for it's name and our family's general obsession with butterflies. I blame it all on our firstborn as we weren't always so crazy about them (don't get me wrong, we've always loved them, but the kids have taken it to a whole other level!).
While expecting our first my husband and I struggled with finding a name for our daughter that we could both agree on. It seemed like we never felt love for any of the names the other would suggest, there were names we hated, names we felt lukewarm about and names that we both did quite like but they just weren't "the one". When we had broken our pregnancy news a few months previous to a close family friend her first comment had been a cheeky remark about what a nice name she had. We had all just laughed it off though and not thought anything more of it. Fast forward back to our name discussions that were getting nowhere fast despite having known the gender for a couple of months and my husband sent me a text from work "Did you know that Vanessa means butterfly?". Turns out our friend had been spot on, not only did she have a beautiful name, but one we fell in love with for it's meaning. I could already picture a little girl in cute butterfly prints running through wildflower fields in summer the second I read my husband's message, and it worked beautifully with the middle names we already had (all our children have three names, we get to choose a middle name each, usually inspired by a relative, leaving us with a first name to agree on mutually). So our first was named after the Greek word for butterfly, Vanessa, which is also the genus name of a group of butterflies which includes the Red Admiral & Painted Lady.
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| Painted Lady - Vanessa cardui |
The collecting of butterflies started innocently enough, mainly limited to select baby clothes and some of my own. But it soon extended to gifts for others, relatives sending messages whenever they spotted a butterfly image or fluttering by, me seeing butterflies on all sorts of objects (and buying them if I could justify it). I'm fairly certain I'm now at a point where I could go into a shop and sniff out anything with a butterfly on it. I'm definitely the easiest person in the world to buy a gift for, doesn't matter what tat it is, if there's a butterfly on it I'll be happy. I've been trying to improve my own knowledge of the animals as well and love looking for butterflies, moths (there are so many amazing moths out there!) and their caterpillars whenever I get the opportunity. We're even planning our garden plants with them in mind.
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| Red Admiral - Vanessa atalanta |
It is a full blown obsession for me now but when we were busy discussing names for our second child we were still only dipping our toes. We found out we were having another girl and I liked the idea of keeping the butterfly theme. I had already fallen in love with a first name option but my other half wasn't 100% sure to begin with so the discussions were pretty drawn out this time too. My choice for her middle name was one of my little sister's names, Aurora. It ensured that I'd get a butterfly in there regardless of our first name choice because the "Aurora butterfly" is the Swedish name for the Orange Tip butterfly. Much to my delight my husband did eventually fall in love with my first choice as well, and so we had a little Nova. Apart from meaning "star" and "new", it also means "chasing butterflies" in Native American Hopi. I think the reason for my blog name is becoming pretty obvious by now!
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| Orange-tip - Anthocharis cardamines |
When we found out we were pregnant again, I won't lie, I secretly hoped for another girl because there were a few beautiful butterfly inspired names I had in mind. But at our 20 week scan we found out we had a boy (the initial disappointment faded quickly and my heart feels so whole having had the joy of bringing up both genders - I think I was just so used to what I had I thought I wanted more of the same) and I thought that that was the end of the butterfly names. We'd try but it was difficult, most are either feminine or come with great gravitas. Names like Apollo, Atlas & Monarch, are strong but didn't feel right for our baby so we kept looking at unrelated names. All the while though, I scrawled through lists and lists of butterfly species from around the world. There just HAD to be a name, either the Latin or common, out there that was masculine, strong, different without being weird, that would suit our little boy. I was so close to giving up when I stumbled upon him, a gorgeous butterfly that lives in the Andes, the Elis Emperor (Doxocopa Elis). The second I found it I sent it to my husband, he'd already suggested the name a month earlier as he'd foundation Swedish astronomer named Elis (we'd explored a space theme since our middle child had space themed names combined with her butterflies) and we had both really liked the name then. Finding the butterfly just made it the perfect name for us... For him.
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| Elis Emperor - Doxocopa elis |
And so our butterfly obsession became well and truly cemented when we committed to naming out third child after one as well. As you can see, the name for the blog very much chose itself thanks to a journey we started back in 2013 when we picked our first baby's name.
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