Baby name story: Pawan-deep

airplane

On the morning of August 27, 2008, a woman aboard a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Adelaide went into labor. Paramjit Kaur gave birth to a baby boy over Northwest Territory, and the plane made an emergency landing at Darwin airport.

A day later, Paramjit and her husband, Jagtar Jaswal, announced that they’d decided to name the baby Pawan-deep Jaswal

His parents said Pawan-deep meant “ocean and air”, in reference to his unusual place of birth.

The name Pawan comes from Sanskrit and does indeed mean “wind.” But Deep (also spelled Dip) typically refers to a “lamp” or a “light,” as in the names Amandeep and Jagdeep, so I’m not sure where the definition “ocean” is coming from. (Maybe the parents spelled it d-e-e-p to coincide with the English word, making it a sort of poetic reference to the ocean?)

Source: Cunningham, Matt. “Miracle baby named after ocean and air.” NT News 29 Aug. 2008.

Image: Adapted from Air Canada Boeing 777-333ER by MarcusObal under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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