Desire

Meaning of Desire

Desire—pronounced deh-ZEE-ray in its silken French guise and deh-ZYR in contemporary English—springs from the Latin desiderium, the resonant noun Roman rhetoricians wielded to describe a yearning so ardent it seemed to glow within the chest. Carried by monastic scribes into Old French as desir and later baptized into the graceful feminine form Désirée, the name became a quiet proclamation that a long-awaited child had at last stepped across the threshold of hope. Steeped in this classical lineage, Desire evokes images of Venus arising from Tyrrhenian waves, of pilgrims lifting their eyes toward distant basilicas, and of the soft thrum of a heart that refuses to relinquish its aspirations. Though American birth records show the name flickering at the periphery—seldom exceeding a hundred bearers in any given year—it persists like a lone votive candle in a vaulted cathedral: discreet yet luminous, reminding all who encounter it that every life is, at its core, an answered yearning.