Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Leora Diza

Leora Diza Baryshnikov was born on December 21st at 6:43 pm, just a few hours shy of the winter solstice. Her birth heralds the return of the sun and the days becoming light again. The name Leora is of Hebrew origin, and its meaning is "compassion; light". Sometimes we call her "Solnyshko" (soul-neesh-ka) which is Russian for "little sun".

Leora's ancestry can be traced back to the Vikings, and so she was also given a form of the Viking name, Aldis. The first element Al- or Ól- is derived from *alu, "protection, fortune." The second element -dís is identical with the Old Icelandic dís, "goddess, priestess, female guardian spirit." A short-form for names in -dís is Dísa.

Diza is also a Hebrew name meaning "joy". Diza has brought great joy to her parents who got to bring her back from the hospital on Christmas Eve. This picture is is from her first day at home.

2 comments:

greta said...

"Leora" means light in Greek as well as Hebrew...

ripper234 said...

Nice idea, setting her up with a blog - I imagine that she will have a huge pagerank when she grows up.

This does raise the question though - when she grows older, will she approve of the fact that most of her personal life is documented on the internet? Just a thought.

I'm Aya's boyfriend btw, in case you're wondering.