All in a Name: a New Day

It’s a new year and Dawn Hart has the perfect name for new beginnings. “I only know that, when my parents heard the name Dawn, they were pretty settled on it,” Hart said. “I don’t really know of any history to my first, but my last name is Irish and my middle somehow translates to bear princess.” Her middle name is Armelle.

Hart said that her mother had a friend named Dawn, but she doesn’t believe that she was named after her. “I used to Google my name and a lot of college and doctor professors would come up, like, smart people stuff,” she said. When people first hear her name, they sometimes say, “Oh, like the break of dawn?” If she could choose her own name, she said she would choose “Florence because I look up to Florence Welch so much.”

Hart isn’t the only relative with an Irish name. Her mother’s name is Dierdre, which is Irish, “but my grandfather spelled it ¨d-i-e¨ instead of ¨d-e-i¨ for reasons that are unknown,” she said. “He did a lot of questionable things.”

Hart comes from a long line of Armijo students. Both her father and her sister graduated from the school. “I´m the youngest at 14, so I definitely don’t see anyone coming soon,” she said. She currently participates in Marching Band.

When she graduates, she intends to go to college “because my father said there’s no choice. I want to go to UC Davis because there’s a dumpling house around the corner.”