The Nibbana Family

And this is my first blog.  I’m five years old and I’m the best girl in the whole wide world.  Here is a picture of me when I had my face painted:

I am 10 and a half months old. Yesterday I got my fourth tooth, to join the third one that popped out last Thursday. Also, I just learned to climb the stairs in our house.  I climbed all the way up on my own earlier this week! It makes Mom and Dad nervous, but it is so fun.

So Chuck and I drove around with our agent looking at houses in Columbia today.  We looked at 7.  They all needed a bit of updating, but only one was a true “fixer-upper”.  Wouldn’t you know the one we like is the fixer-upper!  It is truly the ‘ugly duckling“. It is on a nice lot – .66 acres, and on a corner.  It has a in-ground pool that we don’t know what we would do with.  It was built in 1962 in a contemporary style, meaning it has lots of windows and looks a bit funky.  It was bought as a fixer upper several years ago and started, but never finished.  It is 1700+ square feet and has 3 bedrooms/3 baths.  It also has a full basement the same size as the house.  It has a 2 car garage with a tiny apartment at the back, but it looks like it has some rot.  The house has some visible mold, but the structure looks sound.  I think it needs a bit of work to make it livable. Why is it that Chuck and I can’t seem to be happy with something that is move-in ready?

Lovers around the world can thank a Roman priest for our celebration of love on February 14.

During the mid 200′s Emperor Claudius II of Rome banned marriages or engagements due to the difficulty of enlisting soldiers in the military. Valentine, a Christian priest, secretly married couples despite the emperor’s decree. Eventually, Valentine was imprisoned and put to death on February 14, 270.

As history unfolded and the Christian Church gained more power in Rome, the priests began to eliminate pagan festivals. Lupercalia, an ancient Roman festival celebrating fertility was replaced by honoring St. Valentine’s Day.

In the romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare asserts that names really do not matter in that our names do not define us – we define our names. Shakespeare reveals the boundaries of the term by proposing that a rose would smell sweet regardless of what we call it. Although you may or may not agree with Shakespeare, many of us are interested in names and how their origins derived. The term ‘surname’ comes from the medieval French word ‘surnom’ translating as “above-or-over name”. Ancient French legal documents and records differentiated a particular Pierre and a particular Marie from other Pierre’s and Marie’s by inscribing a second name over a first name.

So how did so many different surnames originate?

Hereditary naming practices began in Europe and spread quickly as a need to identify individuals by more than their given names became a necessity. European surnames first occurred between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, becoming firmly established by the sixteenth century. Prior to this time period, particularly during the “Dark Ages” between the fifth and eleventh centuries, people were largely illiterate, lived in rural areas or small villages, and had little need of distinction beyond their given names. As populations grew, the need to identify individuals by surnames became necessary. The acquisition of surnames has been affected by many factors, including social class and structure, cultural tradition, and naming practices in neighboring cultures.

The American surname Nibbana is of acquired ornamental origin. Surnames of acquired ornamental origin were derived from necessity when those without a surname suddenly needed one. A lady-in-waiting for royalty might have had no traditional surname, but would require one if no longer in the service of royalty. In times of political turmoil, a deposed ruler might require a smaller staff, and long-time servants would find themselves among commoners and suddenly in need of a surname. Names were sometimes invented as combinations of other words.

The earliest recorded references to the surname Nibbana can be found in American documents in the 20^th century when Charles Daniel Nibbana was a citizen of Baltimore, Maryland. Known as the first family in the world celebrating Nibbana as a family name, the surname was adopted in 1993AD as Charles Daniel Nibbana sought an existence separate from that of his natural father. The etymological origin of the word Nibbana is derived from nirvana, which means “freedom from external reality; heaven, bliss”. The word held such significance and meaning for Charles that it was an obvious choice for a new family name.