What’s In A Name

That which we call a rose by any other name, would smell as sweet~William Shakespeare

Hey y’all. The Christmas is a mere two weeks away. My house is fully decorated and my kids have written out their wish list. I know I’ve said it before… I love this time of the year. I get to spend time with family and celebrate my birthday as well. Every year, my last day at work is the 20^th of December. I spend the rest of the year de stressing and trying to make my home as festive as possible. Some might not like Christmas or the hoopla of it. This was the case with my heroine Olanma in The Christmas Ultimatum but consider what Abayomi told her “If not for anything, consider the fact that Christ left all His glory and came down to subject Himself to His own creation so we might have chance at eternal life” that Ladies and Gents is really the reason for the season.

I also spend the last weeks of the year, trying to organize what I want to accomplish the next year by God’s grace. Almost everyone I know swears by vision boards. I am not that kind of girl…I’m more like a “write the vision down make it plain” key word being WRITE. I have this notebook I take everywhere. My husband jokes and says “Babe if that book gets missing, I will go into hiding cos I know your wrath will come down.” It’s not that bad, he is exaggerating but you kind of get the gist.

I’m am an introvert but I promised myself I will do more offline events in the coming year. Book Clubs, book signings and conferences. It is also my aim for now, to release three novels. The first one will be in Spring, then late summer and the fall. My first release for the new year will be titled Amarachi. That bring me to the title of this post. What’s In A Name. I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but where I come from we take our names very very very seriously. You see how many  “verys” I got in there right. In Nigeria, we don’t just name a child because the name is cute. We name kids based on some significant meaning.

My name is Unoma, I love my name, it means “Happy Home” I was named that why? I am the first born of my parents so, I made their home happy…you get it. Most of my family lives in Lagos which is Yoruba territory so although I’m Igbo, I’m also called Abiodun…why? I was born on Christmas Eve and it means “born during a festive period.” And I could go on and on  telling you the reasons I gave my kids the names they have…Even my novels, any character with a Nigerian name is named carefully.

So Amarachi means grace of God. As I told you before, it’s not romance but women’s fiction. So what is grace? It’s commonly recited as “unmerited favor of God” but I like Bill Gothard’s definition “Grace gives us the desire and the power that God gives us to do his will” or James Ryle definition “Grace is the empowering Presence of God enabling you to be who He created you to be, and to do what He has called you to do”  Betrayal is a hard things to let go of. Grace truly describes what my heroine Amara, as she is fondly called will go through and how she really will need that power and presence of God to pull her through to actually do His will…Forgive.

I’ll like to know the significance of your name…drop me a comment below and I may just ask for permission to use it…Amara’s friend in my book needs a name!

Blessings

Unoma