Dear Livia,
It’s strange that you ended up with the name Livia. There were so many things counting against it.
To start, the most important criterion I used when hunting for a girl’s name was that it not end with the letter A or its sound. And what letter does Livia end with? A, of course.
But as I always say, you have to know why a rule exists in order to break it properly. I made the rule against the ending A in order to avoid singsong, a possibility because your surname also ends with A. Can you imagine being named Sarah or Mariah? Yuck! It’s not just the ending sound that causes the problem with those names, though. It’s also the R and how the stresses fall on the syllables. Sarah, Mariah, and your last name each have an R and end with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. Livia does not, so no singsong.
Other family members had their own ideas about how you should be named. Your grammie suggested Melody and Jocelyn. Your vovó and vovô pushed for Florentine. Your father’s cousin Joe and his wife Jessica offered Romana (jokingly, I hope). Though we gave Melody some consideration, neither it nor the others seemed quite right.
The name Livia was still a contender, so next we tried to think of other people who had the name. We could only think of one: Livia Drusilla, wife of Caesar Augustus. Your father and I knew her from the BBC miniseries I, Claudius. That Livia is decidedly bad. She poisons everyone who gets in her way. Her evilness ought to have turned us off to the name straightaway.
But Livia Drusilla is an admirable character in some ways. She is strong, capable, poised. We wish those attributes for you. Just don’t get all power hungry and mass-murdery, OK?
The last obstacle for the name Livia was its similarity to Olivia. I don’t like the name Olivia. It’s extremely popular right now. I wouldn’t want to give you a popular name. It’s harder to feel a sense of individuality when your name is the same as everyone else’s. Plus, when your hear your name, it’s nice if you can assume that you’re the one being called. By choosing Livia over Olivia, I spared you some of that, but I set you up for a lifetime of having to explain over and over again that there’s no O in your name. Sorry about that, O daughter.
“I’ve had a hatred of that letter ever since the night my mother became wedged in a porthole. We couldn’t pull her in and so we had to push her out….I speak O-words myself, so I can spit them out.”
from The Wonderful O by James Thurber
At last, we were ready to leave the hospital and we needed to make the decision. We had not found a name that we liked better, so Livia you became.
Lovely Livia.
Love,
Mom
P.S. As for your middle name, I liked it so much that I would have given it as a first name if I could have found a good middle name to go with it. If you ever get sick of your first name, consider using your middle instead. That’s what your grammie does; she hates her real name, but don’t tell her I told you.