My name

Baby Bea is very proud of her name, Beatrice Rose; she likes how it sounds elegant, but also sweet, she likes how the names go together and how they make her think of some Victorian garden, replete with lily covered ponds, hidden glades and crumbling statues.

The thing Baby Bea likes most is why she was given her names in the first place. Although there was much discussion of her name prior to her grand entrance (and even wild rumours that this may have continued for at least another two days afterwards) apparently Mummy had fallen in love with the name Beatrice when she was 15 years old after studying Dante's 'Divine Comedy' in school.

In this famous Italian epic poem, Dante, who had found himself in the middle of his life lost in a dark wood, travels first down through the nine circles of hell, then through purgatory and finally into paradise. While in the first two parts he is accompanied by his guide, the poet Virgil, he is led into paradise by Beatrice, the representation of beatific love, who was inspired by a real life Beatrice, who Dante was deeply in love with and who served as the primary inspiration for his work.

I am pleased that my parents haven't set unrealistic expectations for me then!

The other thing that is worth knowing about my first name is that it is pronounced slightly differently in Italian than in English. The best way to describe how my name works in Italian is to imagine the unlikely scenario that you are suggesting to a friend of yours, Chay, that his suggested route in life as a human is not working out that well and that he should ideally think about being something more leaf and trunk-orientated. In this situation you would say to him "Be a tree, Chay"....and in doing so you would be giving a pretty good go at pronouncing my name. In fact, this works for all names that end with an 'ice', so that to pronounce my Auntie Alice's name, you would have to imagine that Chay is actually this chap's surname and his first name is Ali.....he would therefore be Ali Chay.

And you might well ask why my second name is Rose, well, apart from being a beautiful name, it is also the name of my maternal great-grandmother, a woman who had six children. So no ridiculous expectations there either...