Babies named after natural disasters

On the unsettling mid-morning of a storm-bound day in Florida of the United States, a baby boy was born on September 2 while category 3 Hurricane Dorian was striking up the Florida coast. In honour of his untimely arrival during the storm, his parents decided to name their son Tadashi “Dorian” Davis.

Hurricane Dorian hit the East Coast of the United States by the end of August as the storm developed from a tropical wave on August 24 in the Central Atlantic, bringing strong gusts of wind and heavy downpour to the coast bound state on Wednesday.

In Bangladesh, on the night of November 15 twelve years ago, a boy was born in the village of Raniganj in Panchgarh. He was nicknamed Sidr – after the storm during which he was born.  

Sakibul Hasan, better known as Sidr, is the second of three children of his parents. Like Sidr, over a thousand babies conceived during storms have been named after such natural disasters.

Aila is one of those children. Conceived during the category 1 hurricane of Cyclone Aila, she was born at Madinabad cyclone centre in Koyra upazila of Khulna on the morning of May 25, 2009.

The baby’s birth had become the reason for the new parents to celebrate life amidst the devastation all around them and as they were suggested naming her after the storm, the couple readily accepted it.

During the category 4 hurricane Cyclone Fani that affected parts of India along with Srilanka, Bhutan and Bangladesh, a baby girl was born in Odisha– one of the Indian regions affected by the cyclone of India and was named Fani.

Baby Fani was born in the Railway Hospital in the Eastern-Indian state at 11.03am on the day Fani tyrannized several neighbouring countries.

In the Southeast African country of Mozambique, a baby girl was born on top of a mango tree during Cyclone Idai that lasted from March 14 to March 21 and claimed the lives of 1,300 people along with causing collateral damage to four African regions.

Despite these natural calamities causing never-ending damage to many regions in the world, many parents have seen the light of life regardless of the cynical and fatalistic environmental conditions that persist during such times of distress. And with hopes of seeing better days, they happily embrace the gift that nature has bestowed upon them in defiance of taking away a little too much.