Hulali Rose Toumia Judd - What’s in a name?
This time around we didn’t name our baby girl until the very last week of our pregnancy… and confirmed it when she was born. We kept calling her Wai or “baby girl” for the first few days after she was born because we weren’t used to calling her by her actual name. It was pretty funny! She’s four weeks old now, and we’ve finally got it down!
As with Jackson and Waipuna, Hulali was given a family name to continue the tradition of honoring our ancestors. Both of her middle names pay homage to her great-great-grandmothers. Rose is from the Reeves ‘ohana on Kaimi’s side, and Toumia is from the Djellali side of Malika’s family. It came about organically because Jackson and Wai spontaneously offered us two names when we told them we were going to be having a baby - Rose, and Kai. Their tutu (Kaimi’s mother) used to watch YouTube videos with them of a baby named Rose who cooks with her father. They were enamored with her! But of course when we heard the name and then found out baby was going to be a girl… our first thoughts were the family connection and that it felt “right” to at least have that name on our list.
A few months later we sat with my sister, Melanie, who speaks Hawaiian fluently and has done extensive research into our family tree. She shared the name “Toumia” from our family in Algeria. We thought it was a beautiful name and that “Rose Toumia” rolled off the tongue quite nicely. Toumia, from what we researched online, does not have an actual “meaning” - it’s simply a first name that is used in Algeria. We did want to make sure that Toumia was the grandmother that my mother lived with and remembered. The one she told us stories about. Once that was confirmed, we knew those would be our baby girl’s middle names.
When it came to her first name Kaimi honed in on our personal circumstances… in 2019, we lost a pregnancy to miscarriage and named our child Kahiau (to love with no expectation of return). That was a really hard season of our lives. This fourth pregnancy was therefore a “rainbow baby” - a baby born after pregnancy or infant loss. Kaimi suggested we start with the word “rainbow” and brainstorm from there.
We knew we didn’t want to be literal and name our child Anuenue (rainbow), but we did want the spirit of the word to be a part of our baby girl’s name. Words like hope, vibrant, colorful, shiny, and glittering came up. We also brainstormed around words that described her activity in the womb. This little one was always dancing, kicking, and jumping around - so words like lele, le’a, mele, and hula popped up in our discussions.
One name stood out to me: Hulali.
Hulali means to “shine, sparkle, and reflect light”… the meaning of this word is so beautiful and we love how it sounds. We weren’t dead set on the name but decided to marinate on it and see if she felt like a “Hulali” when we met her.
In the meantime, coincidences started happening. First, Wai and Jackson ran in their first cross country meet. The day after we put “Hulali” on our list, the final rankings were posted online. Kaimi printed them out and the winner in Waipuna’s category was…. you guessed it! Hulali! (She just so happens to be the daughter of a friend of ours!) Fast-forward to being in the hospital with our baby girl and speaking to tutu, grandpa, and the kids over Facetime. We had a plan to wait to tell them her name until we got back to Maui and they got to meet her. In the discussion over Facetime, tutu says “What’s the name of the little girl who wins all the cross country meets?” It was so funny! Kaimi and I gave each other a knowing glance.
The second set of coincidences, or serendipity if you will, happened in the delivery room. Everyone kept asking us what her name was but we would just say that we were waiting until we met her to decide. During the birthing process baby girl was very active and flipping around (she even grabbed Dr. Pratt’s hand while in the womb!) and our doctor said something about dancing. Then, when she was born (we had some complications with fluid in the lungs) and finally gave her first really good cry, our doctor said “I love to hear you sing”.
Both of those comments struck us because we knew if we named our baby girl Hulali, her nickname would be “Lala”.
Lala means “to bask in the sun; bright, shiny; and diagonal surfing”. But also we liked “Lala” because it’s easier to say in French, and it sounds like, or references, singing. We also loved that within the word “Hulali” is the word “hula” - it’s not a root part of the name, but hula means to dance and that also felt right.
So for all of of those reasons… our baby girl came into the world and we decided she would be named Hulali (Lala) Rose Toumia Judd.