Isaac "Freckle" Browdy

Freckle’s Name

We named Isaac Hoang-Long Browdy based on a combination of traditions that we feel really represents our diverse family.  We had to shoehorn a few different ideas into just two names so it may seem confusing, but I’ll try to lay it out for you.

Jewish

The Jewish tradition is to name your child after a deceased relative.  Usually, the middle name is used.  In our case, we wanted to have his middle name be part of the Vietnamese tradition so we used the first name. Isaac is named after his great grandfather, my maternal grandfather Aaron “Saba” Suchonitzki.

Of course we didn’t want to give him the same name as Saba; we really wanted to put our own spin on it.  We thought Isaac was a good choice because the double-a is very rare in American names and so the connection is obvious while still being unique.

We also like Isaac as a name for a few more reasons.  The first is the Hebrew translation: Yitzhak.  The name means “He will laugh” or more loosely “Laughter”.  I don’t think anyone who knows me and Jenny well will need an explanation on why this fits.  Isaac was also one of the three patriarchs of Jewish tradition.

One final meaning of the name is a reference to one of the greatest minds in human history, Sir Isaac Newton.  Here’s a great little video that sums up some of the awesome things about this guy (Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York):

 

Vietnamese

In the Vietnamese tradition, the first name is the family name, followed by a middle name and then the given name.  Jenny’s family has adapted that tradition to American life.  They use an American first name, followed by a hyphenated middle name then the family name.  They hyphenated middle name combines the middle and given Vietnamese names.  For example, Jenny’s full maiden name is Jennifer Bao-Huyen Banh.

So in our Vietnamese-American family tradition, the middle name is in Vietnamese and it tends to be hyphenated;  just like in the old tradition, the first part is common to all siblings and the second part is unique.  The second part of the name is the given name in Vietnamese and they “…often represent beauty, such as bird or flower names, or attributes and characteristics that the parents want in their child, such as modesty…”  For us, Hoang is the name that will be common across the generation and Long is the unique, given name.

Long means dragon.  Among other things, the dragon in Vietnamese culture represents “the universe, life, existence, and growth”.  In the Chinese tradition (let’s not forget that Jenny is half Chinese!), dragons represent “strength, health, harmony, and intellectuality”.  It’s a very strong name, and represents traits that are very optimistic.  Additionally, this is the year of the dragon and it is common tradition to name a child after the zodiac sign.  And of course, dragons kick major ass, no matter which culture they come from.

Hoang many times can mean “royal” but in this case, paired with Long, it means “golden”.  Hoang-Long refers to the year of the Golden Dragon in the Vietnamese zodiac.  It’s thought to be the most auspicious year of the 60-year cycle and it’s considered to be very good luck to have a son in the year of the Golden Dragon.  In fact, this is supposed to be such a good thing that it’s causing problems in Vietnam!  I hope that since we had a boy this year with no knowledge of the implication, we’ll get all the good luck!

American

Last but not least, we just like the name Isaac.  I (Dan)  have all kinds of rules for what I will and won’t accept in a name (I won’t enumerate them here, because people can take it personally) and Isaac meets all my requirements admirably.