What's in the name?

It was one boring day at work so I decided to check out the meaning of my name and those of my siblings. I have received a good number of response about my name. I didn't use to get that much attention back in the Philippines but I do now. There are still the times when people misspell (i.e. Riza, Raiza, Raisa) and mispronounce my name. There are three ways that I know of "Rah-ee-za:, "Raye-za" or "Ray-za" Plus, there is also the question whether I am Russian. Which really surprises me because for one I do not think I look Russian at all. The only thing Russian with my name is that I share the name of the former First Lady of the Soviet Union who is Raisa Gorbachev. The only difference is she only has one "s" while I have two. LOL

When I was baptized, my dad was asked by the priest if he was not going to add a "Maria" before my name. My dad refused to do so because he didn't want me to be burdened by it later on. So, I ended up with just Raissa. According to my dad, he saw that name from a contributor of Time Magazine and decided way before I was born that he would name his child Raissa. I don't know if there is a connection that even at a young age I was already reading Time Magazine or it was just a mere coincidence. The one after me was another girl who was named Jehann. People always make a mistake in pronouncing her name. Some people say it as "Je-hann" when it is actually just one syllable. It came from Jihan who was the name of Anwar Sadat's wife, the President of Egypt I believe. My dad first wanted Vanessa but my mom vetoed it. At this point, there is Russian, then Egyptian. Our only brother was supposed to be named Marcelius but then again our mom vetoed it so it became Niccolo from Italy. He was named after Niccolo Machiavelli. Then our youngest sister who came 6 years after was named Camille which is French. I don't remember if there were any other names that they were considering. So now we have Russian, Egyptian, Italian and French. Aside from coming from other parts of the world, we all have double letters and we have short names. The most is only 7 letters.

For so many years that is all we know about our names. No one really thought of looking it up or something. But out of my boredom, I decided to search for the meanings of our names. I find out that there are more to our names than we know. My name for example was not originally Russian but French and means "thinker". Hmmmm... When I searched for Jehann's it came out with two results: originally Arabic meaning "the world" and French meaning the feminine form of Jean. My brother's was right though. It is indeed Italian and means "victorious; conqueror of the people" and dear baby sister Camille, like her Ate Jehann her name came out with two results: Latin meaning "virginal; unblemished character" and French meaning "free-born; noble". I got these meanings from http://www.parenthoodweb.com/babynames.html.

It has been said that parents will know what name to give their child when they see him or her. I do not know what our parents were thinking or feeling at that point which made them decide to give us our names. I was satisfied with the explanation that I used to give including the misconception of me being Russian. But now with this new information, I really do not know what to think of it just yet. Will I be able to live up to the meaning of my name? Or do I even have to? Does knowing give me knowledge or does it give me pressure? Or maybe I should just look at this new found edition the same way with what drove me to look it up in the first place...because it might be fun. How about you? Do you know what your name means?