Sorry About That, Suri
The Daily News' Ethan Sacks (hmm) gives two thumbs down on the name that Tom Cruise and the current-future-missus have named their daughter. Turns out that the Persians and the Hebrews both scoff at the language skills of the America's Scientological sweethearts:
Cruise and his fiancee Katie Holmes named the girl Suri, which Cruise's publicist explained means princess in Hebrew and red rose in Persian or Farsi. Wrong on both counts.
"I think it is a mistake," said Prof. Hooshang Amirahmadi, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. "In Farsi, it means red, like a fiery color, but there is no such a thing as a 'suri' that means 'red rose,' I can promise you that," said Amirahmadi. He added that the word also can mean "a party or celebration."
In Israel, there was similar confusion.
"Nobody here has ever really heard of it," an announcer on Israel's Army Radio said yesterday.
Avshalom Kor, an expert on the intricacies of the Hebrew language, told Army Radio there is a tenuous connection. Kor said Suri is a nickname for Sarah as pronounced by Jews from Central Europe.
In ancient Hebrew, Sarah is the feminine form of the word for lord. "We seem to have learned a new Hebrew word—and from Tom Cruise, no less," said a Channel 2 TV anchorman.
Whole story here.
Suri not in top 1,000 most popular baby names, according to searchable Social Security database funded by your payroll taxes here.
Whatever happened to the good old days when American aristocracy classily named their kids after plants and stock returns?
Silly name generator here. (And, despite the efforts of the nametarians at notwithoutmyhandbag.com, there are only silly names that eventually became normalized with time, money, and suspension of disbelief.)