What's in a name ....

In case you haven't noticed, Colleen and I managed to pick a fairly unique name for our daughter. We think it is a beautiful name on many levels.
Let's start with Sequoia - pronounced as if the "qu" were a "k". (Sa Koy a)
I realize that the dictionary will tell you to slip a "w" in the middle of the word, but both Colleen and I fell in love with the local colloquial pronunciation while hiking around the northwest. Believe it or not, Sequoia was on both of our short lists for girl names. We feel it pays respect to nature and is symbolic of the grace, beauty, purity and power found in the natural world.

Sequoias, the trees, can grow to almost 400 feet tall and can possibly live for up to 4,000 years. There is an undeniable spiritual element to them that is enough to take my breath away. We love how they have endured the centuries with an easy grace. We hope that our Sequoia is blessed with the wisdom that these trees have been witness to.
Sequoia is also just a beautiful sounding name and it has the fairly unique distinction of being one of the very few words in the English language to contain each vowel exactly once. That's got to be good for something...




The other reason we love the name is that, deep down, Colleen is really just a tree hugger. Here is a picture of Colleen and Becky Benson hugging "Burnie", one of our favorite trees in the northwest. Colleen named Burnie because of the dark charcoal like scars it wears - evidence of having survived at least one forest fire. Colleen plans on practicing her tree hugging on our Sequoia.


Now lets jump to her middle name - Alsea. First of all the pronunciation is sort of easier than most people try to make it. It is simply two syllables - Al (like the guys name) and Sea (like the ocean). Or perhaps like Elsie with an A?? Anyway, we lived in the town of Waldport while we were in Oregon, which lies on the coast where the Alsea River spreads out to form the Alsea Bay which then immediately, dramatically and beautifully empties in to the Pacific ocean.


It is a classic example of the beautiful river valleys that cut across the Coast Range all along the coast of Oregon. We spent a lot of time hiking and living along it's length and it has been a part of Colleen's and my life together literally from the day we met. We just wanted to include a part of that in Sequoia's name.