We picked a name for our tiny house on wheels! Meet our DIY RV, Ida Lewis.
Guys, after much deliberation, we finally named our girl! To be clear, I mean we chose a name for our RV hehe. We decided to name our DIY van build after the badass American icon, Ida Lewis. But let me back up for a second, because if you’ve been around for a while, you may have thought we’d already had a name going into RV life.
Chris and I moved in together after only 3 months! I know, I know. But the short of it is: when you know, you know. It didn’t take long for me to nickname our first flat together in Barcelona. Every month, I’d have a good giggle picturing the bank folks cringing when they caught a glimpse of my rent transfer to Chris—always lovingly signed “for the Love Nest.” Nest is translated as “nido” in Spanish. And when we started our tiny house journey, we started referring to it as our Casita Nido. Or “little house nest”, if you will. We even reserved the URL and Instagram handle.
Maybe when we build our bricks and sticks home perched high up in the Catalan mountains, or on a seaside cliff on the Costa Brava, we’ll go back to that name. But we both agreed it didn’t fit our new tiny house on wheels, so we got to brainstorming.
Like any proud parents, we had lots of prerequisites to choosing a name for our van. We wanted it to:
pay homage to our American, Cuban, and Scottish heritage
be sensitive to our adoptive home of Spain and its native language
reflect all the adventures we’d embark on and experience on the road in our RV
embody the values we feel strongly about as a family, like feminism, alternative living, tenacity, being close to nature, adventure, and plain ol’ badassery
So with a little creative license, we adjusted the pronunciation a bit. The original Ida was pronounced /eye-duh/, but we changed it up to sound a bit more Spanish. We refer to our RV as Ida Lewis
, /ee-duh loo-es/. Which is also a play on words. Ida means “going” or “to go” in Spanish—appropriate when you consider our house and life are literally on wheels now.
Ida was an American woman, but her surname, surliness, and penchant for braving the freezing sea felt very Scottish. (Plus she has a connection with millionaire and Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie, but more on that later.) Despite her small stature, this woman saved countless men—including numerous naval seamen—from drowning in the sea in a FULL👏 BLOWN👏 BUSTLE!👏 And frankly, I think that sums up the, read: MOOD, we wanted for this next chapter of our lives.
I first heard Ida’s story on the Stuff You Missed In History podcast. I remember enthusiastically recounting every detail of her unique life to Chris when he got home. Who, I should mention, was the one who later had the brilliant idea to honor her as our namesake. But if you’re unfamiliar with her story, I wanted to share a Sparknotes version here.
Ida Lewis was deemed “the Bravest Woman in America” by the press. She was born in Newport in the 1800s. As a preteen, her father was appointed lighthouse keeper of Lime Rock Light just off the coast of Rhode Island. Unfortunately, shortly after moving to the remote island, he had a debilitating stroke. This, and what I can only assume was an innate toughness, required Ida to step up to run the lighthouse and care for her younger siblings alongside her mother.
If you’re like me and hadn’t really given this kind of lifestyle much thought before, let me paint the picture for you. It required her to stay up all night tending to the lighthouse, including filling the lamp with oil from dusk to dawn, trimming the wick, and polishing the reflective bits, so sailors could see clearly. Then after a long night’s work and despite the area being prone to poor weather, she’d brave the sea every day to row her siblings to school. Returning for a quick nap before doing chores and picking them back up, and then it all over again the next day.
If that wasn’t enough badassery for a special honor, Ida is credited with saving 18 lives! Some accounts even say as many as 25 in her lifetime. Here’s the most famous story borrowed from Wikipedia:
“Her most famous rescue occurred on March 29, 1869. Two soldiers, Sgt. James Adams and Pvt. John McLaughlin, were passing through Newport Harbor toward Fort Adams in a small boat, guided by a 14-year-old boy who claimed to know his way through the harbor. A snowstorm was churning the harbor's waters, and the boat overturned. The two soldiers clung to it while the boy was lost, dying in the icy water. Lewis's mother saw the two in the water and called to Ida, who was suffering from a cold. Ida ran to her boat without taking the time to put on a coat or shoes. With the help of her younger brother, she was able to haul the two men into her boat and bring them to the lighthouse.”
Ida loved living in solitude on the island and humbly considered these daring and lifesaving acts, simply, as her duty. However, they garnered her a ton of adoration from the public
She has had music written about her.
She was one of the first women to be recognized as an official lighthouse keeper.
She received a pension (unheard of for female keepers) from previously mentioned Andrew Carnegie.
And the island the lighthouse was on was renamed after her—“the only such honor ever paid to a keeper in the United States.”
But, one of my favorite tidbits about her is this quote where she responds to criticism about it being un-ladylike for women to row boats. Ida said, "None, but a donkey would consider it 'un-feminine' to save lives." That my friends is Ida Lewis. Our RV’s namesake. 👏
