A Girl With a Sword

my name

I know, I kind of obsess over my name, this is like the fortieth time I've talked about it on my blog, but I just realized something. I've always seen my name's meaning given as "lime tree" or "linden tree" and I didn't realize until now that these are the same thing! And they're not lime trees as in bearing limes, it's something else! Which is very confusing and a little disappointing, but it gets better.

This is a lime tree of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. This may not be significant to my readers, but I'm in the middle of reading The Historian and I'm like "Matthias Corvinus, legendary enemy of Vlad III of Wallachia, aka Dracula!" The Wikipedia article on lime/linden trees also talks about how significant they are in folklore. They're the national emblem of not one, not two, but four people groups! I'm impressed, although it will still take awhile for me stop feeling related to the small green fruit.

I realized all this because I was looking up the Romanian pop song Dragostea Din Tei and Wikipedia says "There are several proposed translations of the title, such as Love from the lime trees (also called "linden trees") and Love out of the linden trees." And I was like, oh how nice, it's about me, but what's this about linden trees? So I looked it up and then I realized "Linden" (also, Lyndon, Lindon, Lynden, etc.) is probably the masculine form of my name, even though my baby name book says it's English, not Swedish, it says it means "linden-tree hill" so it's very similar. And I do have a Swedish uncle named Linden (is that how he spells his name?). Anyway, that's like a breakthough for me because I could never figure out why there weren't any names similar to mine and I just realized there are! And I also couldn't figure out why a Swedish name would mean "lime tree," and that's solved too! Plus I get to be named after a national emblem of my fellow Slavs! I feel like my name totally unites my heritage! Great job picking my name, Mom!