QotD: What My Name Means

What does your name mean and why did your parents choose it for you? 
Submitted by mommy2two.

When my father went to register for my social security number when I was six months old, the lady behind the plexiglass looked at my name and said to him, there in 1980 in the middle of Ohio, "Is your wife black?" I guess the implication being that African-Americans were more apt to name their children something as bizarre as Aarika than Caucasian folks and as my father is boringly pale, it had to be some Nubian goddess that he had tucked away at home. Of course, now we're living in the time of Pilot Inspektor and Jermajesty so people of all races and creeds can screw up their children's lives by making their names impossible to take seriously. Huzzah!

I don't know that my name means anything but when people ask if it's Scandinavian, I guess I could probably say that it is by spelling but not by design. I was named Aarika because my older brother is Aaron and my parents, as the story goes, were watching a local beauty pageant on television and one of the women was being said as "Erica" but spelled "Aarika" and there it was. If I'd been a boy, I would be Aarik and I paved the way for my younger sister who rounds out the bottom of our batting order of double-A names - Aalison.