A six-year-old girl from England who watched the birth of Vancouver's baby beluga whale on the Internet less than a week before moving to the city has picked the young calf's new name: Tiqa.
The whale was born in June at the Vancouver Aquarium, which held a contest to name the calf.
Tiqa is an acronym, picked from the words Tuesday, the day of the week the calf was born; Imaq, her father; Qila, her mother; and Aurora, her grandmother.
The winning entry came from Hannah McDonald who had watched Tiqa's birth on the aquarium's webcam just days before her family moved to Canada.
"After moving to Vancouver they'd come down here and gotten themselves a membership to the aquarium, and they'd been here a dozen times over the summer," aquarium spokesman Kent Hurl said Friday.
The aquarium received about 5,500 submissions, mostly through its website, and a committee came up with a shortlist of five names: Tiqa, Sura, Shiya, Kuvia and Mira.
Those names were sent out to the aquarium's members, who voted on the winner.
"As soon as we started getting votes from our members, Tiqa was the runaway favourite," said Hurl.
"I guess people felt a real connection with the name. Maybe they also felt the name matches her spunky little personality. She's quite an adventurous soul."
The name is a departure from the aquarium's other whales, whose monikers have typically reflected the animals' northern roots.
Mother Qila is from the Inuktitut word for beluga; father Imaq is from the Inuktitut word for the Arctic Sea; grandmother Aurora is named after the northern lights; and Kavna, the other female beluga, is named after an Inuit myth.
But Hurl said Tiqa's name draws from the other whales, reflecting their roots to "keep it in the family."
"(If) you break down the name and figure out what each letter means, then that language has been incorporated," he said.
Tiqa suffered an infection in the weeks after her birth, but Hurl said the young calf is now in good health.
"She's doing really well," he said.
"She's developing on track and is a healthy little girl. She's still nursing really well with her mom, she's gaining lots of weight and is really active."
There are now five belugas at the aquarium, two of which were born in captivity.
Aurora gave birth to Qila in 1995, making Qila the aquarium's first homegrown beluga.
In 2002, Aurora gave birth to another whale, Tuvaq, but it died mysteriously three years later.
The aquarium obtained its first whale, Kavna, in 1976, seven years after the animal was captured in the Hudson Bay off Churchill, Man.
Imaq and Kavna were taken from the same area in the late 1980s, as was another male beluga, Nanuq, who has since been transferred from the Vancouver Aquarium to Sea World in San Antonio.
The aquarium abandoned its direct-capture policy after it acquired Aurora, and now only accept whales and dolphins that have been injured or born in captivity.
