by Daniela Syrovy
Alright I’ll just come out with it. I named my daughter Suri. I know
what you’re thinking. I must be totally in love with TomKat. I have
posters of Tom Cruise from his Cocktail days in my basement. I think
Katie Holmes is the cat’s ass. I’m totally obsessed with celebrity
culture. I’m a celebrity hound, a star f*@*er. My dogs name is Paris, my
cats name Hilton. I secretly call my man’s nether region the Pitt. I
read Perez twenty times a day. I’m addicted to cheesy entertainment
shows. I wish Mary Hart was my aunt.

Truth be told I don’t even own a television. Gasp! I could care less
what Britney wears to the grocery store and I have to hold the vomit
back every time someone says, “Ohh how beautiful– you named your
daughter after Tom Cruise’s baby.”

The last time someone made this comment I lost all my patience and the
unfortunate soul had to hear me bark back, “Actually she’s named after
my dead grandmother.” Followed by a sharp look and me storming off.

I suppose it’s my fault. I should have known. I should have known that
people would jump to the most shallow of conclusions. Being a publicist
I should have understood the power of TomKat. But I couldn’t resist- I
couldn’t help it. We wanted to name her after a notorious Egyptian
goddess, we wanted to name her after a constellation, after a Norse
mythological character, after a favourite literary icon. But when she
came sliding out of my body with her cool, sweet, angelic and soft
demeanour, the other names didn’t suit her. We spent two full days
getting to know the baby before naming her and all our other names
seemed too abrasive or rambunctious. Suri was our last pick, but when we
looked into our baby’s eyes for two days straight we just knew she was a
Suri.

So I am setting the record straight once and for all. My baby girl is
named Suri. She was named after my grandmother. My grandmother was an
incredible woman with class and sass and a mad dose of intelligence. She
spoke 9 languages fluently and lived in a time when no one gave a shit
about Hollywood celebrities and what finger they pick their nose with.
She lived during Communist Czechoslovakia and raised a hell of a family
despite the oppressive political and social scene. She lost most of her
family in the Holocaust, but survived herself and lived on only to
succumb to colon cancer years later.

I never had the privilege of knowing her. I only know her through
stories and a few pictures. According to my mom I have her smile and her
brains (I’ll take that).

She went by many names. Her birth name –her Hebrew name was Suri. Back
then and in that part of Eastern Europe it certainly wasn’t en vogue to
have a Jewish name so she had no choice but to deny it. Suri is the
Hebrew form of the name Sarah, so to some she was Sarah, to others she
was Slatica, which is the Slavic and more Christian form of the name
Sarah and to most she was known as Aurelia.

After the war she had all of her identification papers changed so that no record of the name Suri
existed. She changed her name to Aurelia, a decidedly non-Jewish name and
she was known as this to her family and to the world. We were this close
(almost press your index finger and your thumb together) to naming her
Aurelia. All I could think is that people would pronounce it Orillia and
not ‘Owrelia” the way it’s meant to be pronounced. I also knew the
general public would not be able to roll the ‘r’ in the way that makes
the name sound more beautiful. And worst of all who wants to be called
Orillia? I couldn’t stand the thought of her name being mispronounced
and sounding like she was named after a shitty Ontario town. It was all
of these things but more importantly it was the fact that Aurelia was my
grandmother’s known name but Suri was her original name and everyone
knows that the original is always better than the remake or sequel. She
was known as Suri or Surika—the pet version of the name to only a very
select few. It was her secret and it made the name exclusive and
special. Even my mother didn’t know my grandmother’s birth name until
well into her adulthood.

So we reclaimed it. We brought it back from the dead so we could honour
the grandmother I wish I could have known and so we could honour my
heritage. We use it loud and proud. In Hebrew it means ‘princess’; in
Persian culture the name means ‘red rose’ and in my world it means
dynamic, super fantastico, woman extraordinaire.

It’s a horrible coincidence that the Cruise baby happens to have the
same name and I’m still disgusted every time someone makes that
observation and feels the need to announce it to me. When naming your
babe my advice is to stay away from the names Shiloh, Maddox, Lourdes,
and Paris, unless of course your Grammy rocked it first.