Steve's Notebook Blog

Last Thursday, we got a new addition to the family.  It was a daughter, and she is our first child.  I’m sure that her arrival has changed everything — from my daily habits, to my priorities in life, and even towards how I write my blog entries.  I think every father naturally has an instinct to protect his family, so I will only refer to my baby daughter on this public blog by her first name.

Her name is Arwen.

Now if you’re thinking “Arwen Undómiel, youngest daughter of Elrond and Celebrían”, then you my friend am a fellow geek.  While the most famous Arwen lived among the mythical Elves of Lindon in a fantasy realm created by J.R.R. Tolkien, the name is more mundanely an old Welsh name meaning “muse”.  Anyone unfamiliar with the works of Tolkien (read: non-geeks) will obviously not make the connection with Lord of the Rings.

Now I do admit that we chose the name not because of its Welsh origins, but more because we are fans of Lord of the Rings.  However, it’s a fitting name for our daughter even in that context.  The Arwen of Lord of the Rings was the daughter of Elrond Half-Elven and the elf Celebrían.  That makes her three quarters Elven.  Likewise, baby Arwen is three quarters Taiwanese.  Also, what girl wouldn’t want the image of Liv Tyler from the movie to come to mind whenever someone mentions her name?

Here is baby Arwen, and someday she will be more famous than Liv Tyler:

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 11:02 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.