What’s your name
Heart — and soul
July 10, 2010
Kristin Rushowy
TORONTO STAR
“Gentleness is stronger than severity, water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than force.”
As a university student, Sarah Kapoor read those words by author Hermann Hesse in the novel Siddhartha. They made such a big impression on her that she wrote them down.
“I actually got ideas for parenting from the book — passages that I wrote out on recipe cards, thinking ‘I need to remember this when I’m a parent.’ ”
A decade later, when pregnant, she and husband John Christensen had no trouble finding girl names they liked, but struggled to find one for a boy.
Then, two months before she was due, Kapoor decided to reread the novel. One day, while sitting on the couch, she looked at the spine of the book as it sat on the shelf and noticed that within the name Siddhartha was Hart.
“I knew that was going to be his name,” she says. “His full name would be Siddhartha, but we’d call him Hart.”
Christensen agreed; he also read the book, and the two read it aloud to one another.
Siddhartha Kapoor Christensen was born Aug. 28, 2008, at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, weighing 7 lbs., 2 oz.
Kapoor, his middle name, was important to include as Hart is the only boy born in her immediately family for more than 40 years.
Hart had lots of appeal: it’s is an old English term for deer, Kapoor’s favourite animal; and, she adds, “he’d be my Hart, and my little sweetheart.”
For fun, they thought Hart Christensen sounded cool, “but if he makes it as a Bollywood star, he could be Siddhartha Kapoor.
“He has a Hollywood name and a Bollywood name.”
Plus, the name incorporates Buddha — Siddhartha being the name of the founder of Buddhism — and Christ, through Christensen.
Kapoor says her own father always encouraged his family to learn about other religions.
“He would say, ‘no religion teaches you to be a bad person, so learn them all,’ ” she recalls. “My dad would take us to midnight mass in the Catholic Church, to Buddhist temples, we’d go to Seventh Day Adventist Bible camp — we learned every religion. So it’s not surprising that my child’s name has two religions in it.”
Did you recently have a baby and choose an interesting or unusual name? Email krushowy@thestar.ca.