countrylizb, if you’re reading this, I just want to start by saying I like the way you think! You wrote in another topic:
If it is a name I’m going to use to honor someone, then the meaning doesn’t matter as much. Like [name]Frances[/name]. [name]Frances[/name] Means"from [name]France[/name]". It’s not that great of a meaning if you’re not actually from [name]France[/name], but it is the name of my great-grandma who died 10 years ago and whom I loved very much, so I am going to use it anyway. I have thought about pairing it with Ansara, which means sunflower, then it would be pretty. It makes me think of an Impressionist painting.
“Impressionist painting” – lovely thought!
But you got me thinking about your mention of the name “Ansara” meaning “sunflower.” I’m wondering whether you got that from a recent episode of the television series Monk – “Mr. Monk & the Foreign [name]Man[/name]”? In the episode, a character from Nigeria tells Monk that his murdered wife’s name was “Ansara,” which in his language means “sunflower.”
There are literally hundreds of different [name]African[/name] languages and dialects spoken in Nigeria, and so I’ve been unable to corroborate this. I even telephoned both Nigerian embassies in New [name]York[/name] and [name]Washington[/name], D.C., to see if anyone there could corroborate this, and was told that no-one had ever heard of the name.
I’m wondering whether the writers of the Monk series made that up for the episode? countrylizb (or anyone), do you have any source other than Monk for that name? Thanks in advance!
[name]Ah[/name]. Then I would be careful about using “Ansara” as a name for a child, as I have a strong suspicion that the writers of Monk might have swiped that name from the name of actor [name]Michael[/name] Ansara, and made up the “Nigerian meaning” to go with it. I could be wrong, but until an actual source for that name can be found, I’d advise to take it with a grain of salt.
Television script and TV novelization writers are notorious for playing such name games when coming up with names for their characters. [name]Star[/name] Trek author [name]Peter[/name] [name]David[/name] took the names of the Hebrew words for Passover seder plate items as the names of aliens in his novel Imzadi: Maror, Beitzah, Karpas, etc. My husband, too, once “borrowed” an actual surname to name an alien race (the “Calderisi”) in one of his own [name]Star[/name] Trek novelizations. I could come up with more examples, but those are just off the top of my head.
[name]Do[/name] you mind telling me where you got this meaning from?
The reason why I’m asking is because Ansara is my name and in the Arabic sense it doesn’t mean “sunflower” it means HELPER. It originated form the name ANSAR, which was the name given to people who helped the Islamic prophet [name]Muhammad[/name] when he migrated from [name]Mecca[/name] to Medina.
On another note it is also known in the African language as a [name]FRIEND[/name], PATRON OR SUPPORTER which is very similar to the Arabic meaning.
but if you want the meaning ‘sunflower’ the name Hinata is Japanese