whats an "axayacatl"?

When I was in elementary school we had an assignment to find the meaning behind our first names. We all had to go on those baby naming websites and find ourselves. I quickly realized my real name had a lot of different origins quickly, and I've thought about it ever since.

My name is Asha, and "Asha" is found in a lot of different cultures and contexts. In sanskrit it means hope, in swahili it means life. It's a central concept in Zoroastrianism representing divine order and truth. It also happens to be a city in Russia. When I was learning kanji it's spelled 亜紗. These characters can be interpreted as a lot together but a few where "Graceful and Delicate", "Next to softness", and "exotic beauty".

I really wanted to find out the true origins of my name. I ended up going all the way back to the Aztec empire, where the phonetic "Asha" comes from the word axayacatl or axaxayacatl which are a type of aquatic insects. They used to be a big part of aztec cuisine and their eggs were sold as caviar. The first person named Axayacatl was the sixth tlatoani and the Emperor of the Aztec Triple Alliance. I interpret the name as very militant because of that.

I thought why not name myself after a warlord! There's something really cool about having an ancient name on a medium that intersects the future and the past like websites. It's also sentimental to me! My grandmother and I used to live in a house with a water bug problem. It's a grotesque nostalgia, I often feel like I'm still her little water bug.

I prefer Axa and consider "Asha" too intimate, and it's a dead name at this point. Everyone knows how I feel about hope, so overtime I x'd it out. It's pronounced exactly the same so I never really think about it. I like my name, I feel like it invokes divine law given the cultural context, and I think it's attachment to war is beautiful. Whenever someone calls out my name, I feel like they're invoking a doomsday clock that sleeps deep inside me. Tick tick tick! Something mesmerizing, lovecraftian, destructive. I think you should choose any name that makes you feel big, no matter how unconventional it is!