generally people told me that my kids names are very long, followed by auuw that's nice, or once in a while they ask me to repeat. i admit that my kids names are lengthy that both aaqilah and natalia's filled up all the boxes during registration. 

each names has their own story behind, particularly the first ones. ok, my kids got 3 names, first and the 3 always random with the same ASFI in the middle. i was once asked if ASFI is a combination of my name and o.h, to which my answer is actually no. asfi was one of few names given by my father in law that o.h decided to give to his daughters. unlike o.h, i personally prefer short and strong names. he told me that he doesn't want his name to overshadow his kids and it took me a while to finally agree. nevertheless we enjoy the tensions and headaches during the process of naming the kids haha totally worth i'd say :)

i fell in love with aaqilah when i first heard it in edinburgh. do i need to be in edinburgh to liking the name? of course not and akilah is actually quite a common name in malaysia. i couldn't recall how's it spelt but i remembered her being called lala fondly by her family. when i asked for her actual name, her mother told me it's akilah and i was kinda like star-strucked. there and then i decided to give akilah when i had a daughter one day. when aaqilah was nearly born, i searched for the name's details and fell again for one of the spellings, double AA with Q hence it's AAQILAH due to its unique spelling. from the moment she officially named AAQILAH ASFI IZZAH (izzah means noble in arabic), we hoped that she'll live up to the true meaning of her names - intelligent and noble, amen..

when i was pregnant with natalia, we didn't know it's a girl until the moment we saw her for the first time. however i've always had the feeling that it's gonna be a girl although it's not 100% confirmed. one day i was wiki hopping from one page to another until i stumbled upon christine hakim, a living legend in indonesian film industry. i happened to know that her middle name is natalia because she's born on christmas day, as the root of 'natalia' is natal relates to it. originally it's an italian name and i was opposed by o.h in the beginning. but when he found out that natalia is also a name of one of kobe bryant's kids, he was on board with my suggestion and thought it's kinda cool. heh so typical. our families were like are you guys now out of ideas? i liked azraa (again with the double AA) too hence it's NATALIA ASFI AZRAA. it sounds so unique and like a magnet, it attracts people's interests as well.

where should i begin with sufi? o.h was kinda liked sophea but when i told him that sophea/sofea has started garnering attention lately, he changed it to sufi. the lexical root of the word is traced to safa (arabic) which means purity. also, etymologically sufi is derived from a greek word 'sofia' meaning wisdom. we added KALEELA at the very last minute as we weren't decided on her official name even after nearly 2 weeks since she's born. i love khalila but o.h wanted it spelt with double EE. both kaleela and khalila have different meanings in arabic although they sound quite similar. and unlike aaqilah and natalia, this time the first name is shorter as i tend to go with longer names previously.

there how the kids got their names. for me, i've always liked random names ever since i was young and o.h has his own taste and prefers systemic and rhythmic names. it's not easy but we managed to come up with solutions that we both love.