Kara-Lailach Igone Suendermann-Oeft

My dear friends,

The day before yesterday, we were woken up by strong contractions in Christiane’s belly.
We were well-prepared, since this Friday, September 7, 2007, was exact 263 days after our
baby’s conception, the very exact number like for our first two daughters Nele Theophanu
and Hannah Eulalia. The only distracting difference was that labor did not start in the
middle of the night but during Friday’s rush hour. And yet more distracting was the fact
that the hospital, Lenox Hill in New York’s Upper East Side, was about 14 miles (22 km) from
our home in Brooklyn – 22 km car ride through Brooklyn and Manhattan during rush hour with a
woman, who gave birth to her first children after 4 and 2 hours of contractions.
The only reasonable consequence was not to take the car but the subway – and we successfully
got off after about 40 minutes at Central Park South taking a cab to the final destination.
But everything turned out to be slightly different from the former experience, so this time,
residing in a very comfortable labor room with a view to the Upper East Side skyline, we had
even time to take a siesta (after I had worked two hours remotely), and later that day
decided to push the baby out, since we wanted the 263-day rule to apply.
At 7:25 pm (19:25 h), our 6 lb 15 oz (pi kg) heavy and 19 3/4 in (0.5 m) long daughter saw
the light of day.
We gave her the name

Kara-Lailach Igone Suendermann-Oeft,

where every single component carries his own background story:

Kara (from Spanish cara = beloved), is a name that equivalently would have been applicable
to a boy, which Christiane somewhat would have preferred for the sake of the family’s
balance. I derived the very rare usage of Kara as a male name from the hero of the first
six novels of one of my favorite authors, Karl May, who referred to himself on his travels
through the Orient Ottoman Empire as Kara Ben Nemsi (Arabic: Karl, Son of the Germans)

Lailach (from Hebrew lilach = a flower), is the link to where she was born and will grow up
– in the city of the largest Jewish community in the world.

Igone (from Basque igon = ascension, but with Greek pronunciation like in Antigone), is an
anagram of Inge O. (Oeft, Christiane’s maiden name), which was the name, Christiane and her
two year older sister gave their baby dolls, when they played house pretending to be mothers
some twenty-five years ago. Now, they were pregnant at the same time both expecting girls,
a fact, which led to the identical middle names of both children.

Suendermann is my birth name and was selected to be, according to German law, the single
family name of all our children. The decision, whether to use Suendermann or Oeft, was made
based on the gender of our first child.

Oeft, Christiane’s maiden name, could only survive as part of her current last name
(for the restrictiveness of the German law) and, for the openness of the American law, as
the last name of our third born.

All three, mother, third born, and father, returned home after one night at the hospital and
are looking forward to receiving your numerous responses.

Very truly yours,


David