And We Named Her...

We all know "aurora" as being the natural phenomenon of greenish - often purplish or white - light appearing in undulating streaks near the northern (aurora borealis) and southern (aurora australis) poles.  But Aurora is also the Latin name for the Mythical Goddess of the sunrise: every morning she renews herself and flies across the sky, announcing the arrival of the sun.  Aurora had two siblings, a brother (Sol, the sun), and a sister (Luna, the moon), and she was the mother of the Anemoi (the winds), who were offspring of Astraeus, the father of the stars. 

As we discovered, finding just the right name for your boat is perhaps as daunting as selecting a name for your child.  Or maybe not, it depends on you I guess.  And, I've never had to name a child (though A and I had named a dog and two cats...), so what do I know?  Over the many years in which we dreamed of making the catamaran a reality, we thought we had “the” name selected, several times.  But then, when reality hit and it was time to paper something up and have a logo created, what we thought was the name no longer fit.  We found ourselves scrambling to meed a deadline (for the graphics to be printed on the gangplank), and I won’t even get into the lengthy and often colourful brainstorming sessions we had.  We had several criteria, all of which had to be met:  

#1:  We had to both completely agree 100% on the name. If either of us had the slightest hesitation on the name, it was scrapped outright.  

#2:  It had to be one word (this ties in with #3)

#3:  It had to be easy to say and read, without misreading the pronunciation (some names we had could be pronounced several ways.)  It’s always been a personal peeve of mine to see boat names written on the hulls of boats that are illegible, unpronounceable, or just confusing in some manner.  Imagine having to say your boat’s name on the radio, and then spell it out.  Simple is better, and better yet, something that pretty much everyone knows (or should know) how to spell in the first place.   

#4:  We wanted the name to reflect nature in some way, preferably in some way that would contextually make sense. 

With ‘Aurora’, we felt we hit the nail on the head with all points.  We loved the simplicity, the sound, and found the reference to sun, moon, stars, sky and wind was quite appropriate for a sailing vessel.  

We worked with a graphic artist to design the logo, again wanting something simple, easy to read, but also elegant and timeless to suit the majestic lines of the vessel.  

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