Stepping foot into 2020, something told me that there’d be a lot to look forward to. First, the number two — twice! My lucky number. A number that feels simple and balanced and symbolic of togetherness.
Then, Pantone released color of the year. Blue. The vastness of a big sky reflecting on a wild ocean. The familiarity of an evil eye hanging from the closet doorknob. The navy band around my wrist that holds a trio of rings in place, representing three generations of women in my family.
While this year wasn’t exactly what I expected, I continue finding my way back to the calming depths of blue. The light blue trim of the 1940s house my boyfriend and I moved into. The blueberry stain I lick off my fingers every morning after making a smoothie. Maybe it’s the mind just looking for connection, but there’s something poetically pleasing to me about seeing the world through some sort of theme.
Soon after moving into our new home, my boyfriend and I decided to get a dog. Still navigating differing tastes in homemaking and interior design, he was sure we’d face similar challenges with the puppy naming game. My mind took me back to naming products and features at work, where I’d lead teams through as objective of a process as possible. Together, we’d agree on critical criteria, create a matrix, and then funnel names through that system, scoring each possibility and relying on numbers to dictate the winner.
While bringing structure into team naming exercises often helped limit personal attachment and increase efficiency, it also sometimes undermined the power of gut instinct and intuition. What about a name that just feels right? Could that ever be enough?
A day or two after we found our dog, unbeknownst to me, my boyfriend’s dad said to him, “Why don’t you name him ‘Blue’?” Loving the idea, but not the word choice, my boyfriend looked up the word for blue in my family’s mother tongue. In Turkish, blue is “mavi.” Born in France, he loved that mavi sounded like “ma vie,” or “my life” in French.
That same day, my boyfriend looked at me and said “What about ‘Mavi’ for the puppy?” And that was it. Absolutely no matrix needed. No criteria. No scoring system. Sometimes it just feels right.
