None of these things influenced us when it came to naming our child. Basically, when it came to finding our baby's name I sat down with Dereje and told him to start rattling off Ethiopian names. Many of these names were discarded when I found that I couldn't repeat them back to him, but some others were quite catchy...Saba was one of them.
Upon further inquiry Dereje and I found out more about the Ancient city named Saba that Ethiopians speak about:
The people of Saba were probably a mixture of East Africans and their Southern Arabian descendants who had long populated the region. Saba had a very matrifocal society with a host of female deities. According to the Kebra Negast, a holy book of Ethiopia, it is said that Makedda herself created a dictate stating "only a woman can rule." Polyandry, the practice of taking more than one husband by a woman, and tracing one's kinship based upon matrilineal descent was common. The earliest known Arabian temple was at Marib (in Southern Yemen), capital of Saba, and was called Mahram Bilqus, "precincts of the Queen of Saba." The Arabs called this woman, Bilqus or Balkis; in Ethiopia, Makedda, meaning "Greatness." She is the celebrated Queen of Sheba of the Bible who is described as "black and comely." Located in a strategic location, Saba flourished as a trading community in goods from Asia as well as Africa. Even coffee drinkers trace the original cup to Ethiopia's Kefa region.
In all seriousness, they had me at "female deities".
3 comments:
i hope that someday when her boyfriend in exasperation says "do you think you are the queen of sheba?" she says um yeah!!!
what an awesome name!
hahahahahah Kara, that is hilarious. I will have to remember to tell her that.
Definitely! I think guys are totally attracted to women named after ancient cities that were only run by women - I think that just screams "I"m easy going"!
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