April 02, 2006: The Name
Ivan is the Croatian form of John, although the name exists in several other Slavic languages. I've always liked the name and having spent most of my life outside of Croatia, for me it was never tainted by its popularity. (Ivan is probably just as frequent a name in Croatia as John is in the English speaking world.) So, Ivan was a favorite early in the name-picking (even way back before Veronika was born) because: We liked the sound of it, especially combined with Souzek (which is a Czech name). We liked the connection to Croatia (this is where my relatives gasp). We wanted to use either John or Paul in honor of Pope John Paul II, not both though, as that seemed a little too loaded (even though positively, but still). The pronunciation is EE-vahn, with emphasis on the "I", not "van". The vowels are pronounced just like in my name (Dinka), short and open. We knew that people might find this a little confusing at first, as Ivan is usually pronounced differently in English and then there are also Evan and Ewan and such, but we felt confident about it, because we took the name from another language and didn't just pick a random pronunciation for fun.
Joseph is pronounced the English way, because, well I don't like the German version as much (Josef, pronounced YO-zef) and the Croatian version would have been maybe a little overkill as far as Slavic influence goes. After all Ivan is a mix of nationalities, so it's good if his name reflects that. We picked Joseph because we liked the name but not quite enough to use it as a first name. We wanted one of our children to have St. Joseph as a patron and since the feast day of St. Joseph is on 19th March, it was fitting to use it now as we knew he was going to be born in March.
Posted by mama at 03:47 PM