We have a boat name!

After many, many walks around the block in the evenings, we have decided on a name!

Sailing Vessel Mira (SV Mira for short)

Here is a link to the YouTube video where we announce the name.

What makes naming a boat so hard is that you can choose from a lot of different types of names. You can be "funny/punny" and name a boat something like Knot Working, or Never Again 2. You can name a boat after a concept or a feeling, like Tranquility, Respite or Traveler. And you can, of course, name your boat using a proper name; traditionally a girl's name, but something simple like Jenny, or as in friends of ours, Greek Goddess.

Given that this boat will be our home, we quickly ruled out funny/punny names. That just doesn't seem right.

BUT, we got stuck for a while on concept/feeling names and just a traditional girl's name. We both brainstormed and came up with lists. We then bounced them off one-another and looked into their meanings. Names that meant things like "trusting" or "sinky" were quickly eliminated.

So what made us decide on Mira?

A couple of things:

It's short and easy to spell over the VHF (Mike, India, Romeo, Alpha)
We think it is a pretty sounding name
It has very pleasant and appropriate meanings for many, many cultures

Mira Name Meanings

Gaelic: merry; filled with mirth
Latin: wonder; wonderful; admirable; peace; female ruler; ocean
Slavic: peace
Albanian: goodness or kindness
Spanish: behold; literal translation of "to look"
Sanskrit: ocean; sea; boundary; limit
Kurdish: duchess; princess
Latin: extraordinary; to be admired; beautiful
Greek: fate; destiny

Lastly, Mira is also the name of a variable red star in the Cetus (Whale) constellation, which allows us to carry on the theme of our current boat, Betelgeuse, which is the name of the variable red star in the Orion constellation.

To celebrate our naming, we had these bottle openers made up that we used to hand out to friends and family at a get together we had:

Turns out the minimum order quantity is 500, so we have a LOT left. We plan to use these as give-aways as we meet people during our travels and to give them to customs officials as we check into new countries that we are visiting (a lot of cruisers will give out hats with their boat's name on them, but we thought this may be more useful).

Thoughts on the name? Thoughts on the bottle opener? Let us know in the comment area below!

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