There are a thousand things to do when starting your own business and tons of resources to help you do it. One of the first things, however, is to choose a name. How did we come to use an obscure Greek name as the backbone of our entire livelihood?
Naming is important for a lot of reasons. When I started my first business, Work and Play, Day by Day selling curriculum and education resources I didn't realize that on every single collaborative project and vendor list I would be listed dead last. After all, alphabetic order is fair right?
Another downside of this name is that "work and play" and "day by day" are pretty common phrases on their own. Run a search and we might not be on the first page, even if you type in the name exactly. When it came time to name the farm we looked at a few iterations of adding farm to work and play. We even tried Latin. Knowing the downsides of work and play, however, we wanted to really love whatever name we chose. We wanted it to be somehow "us". In order to explain how that brought us to Euphrosyne Corner we will have to back up a little.
"Towards Joy" is a phrase we were using as a family motto before moving to the farm. In 2015, we were blessed to welcome a little girl named Siena (named after St. Catherine of Siena) into our lives for a short amount of time. You can read more about her story, here.
Born at 37 weeks, she lived for 105 minutes most of which was spent in the arms of those who loved her best. A few years later, we learned that St. Catherine of Siena’s family nicknamed her little Euphrosyne, a Greek name meaning Joy. Siena taught us to fight passionately for those we love and to unappologetically put family first…moving always towards joy. As part of our search for the perfect farm name, we looked at the geography of our farm. The most defining geography is actually that we are literally an entire corner. There is an intersection that runs through our property and we own all four (actually three, but our driveway creates a fourth) corners. We decided we would make our geographic description "Corner Farm" rather than another word like "acres" or "river". Nothing wrong with those names, but it is our corner that makes us most unique.
That begged the question, what kind of corner? We started talking about what a corner is. It is a place you turn from one thing to another. I'm not sure who realized it at the time, but our family already knew what we had been turning towards- joy. But Joy Corner Farm? Maybe not. Now Euphrosyne Corner Farm on the other hand... turning towards joy with a connection to the very child who taught us how to do it? That had a certain ring to it. Siena never lived on the farm, but here she is with us around every corner. Our amazing design friend even put her birthday (January 14) into our Joy stickers, available here - one dot surrounded by 14 lines topping the word joy!
Siena's strength, resilience and love taught us how to fight for what matters most. To seek lasting joy rather than momentary pleasure or happiness. She taught us how to do hard things and work together. And now we help teach other people to do the same, hopefully setting an example that the sacrifices are worth it. Joy has been joined by simplicity and generosity as foundational principles for how our family lives in relationship to each other and the community around us. We designed the E-Arrow logo to remind everyone to turn towards joy in every moment.
Of course as a business name it has a few downsides. It is hard to say and even more difficult to spell. It does, however, lead to fantastic conversations with curious new customers at market.
I will say, however, Euphrosyne (yoo-FRO-sin-ee) plus farm wins on the search engines!
