What’s in a Name?

I’m sitting here tonight, reminded of just how old I really have become.  After a week at work (albeit a short work week thanks to Labor Day), I’m pooped and just so thankful that I have nowhere I have to be!  Actually, part of the reason I’m NOT going anywhere is that the drywall man is currently taping and putting on the drywall mud in our soon-to-be home office.  It’s finally coming together, and I’m really excited about it.  It’s like Christmas every time I come home from work! 

Anyway, needless to say, I’m just relaxing tonight and enjoying every second of it.  Kevin is working his first football game tonight, and even that brings back memories of where were just a year ago.  I remember being so sad at this time last year, as summer was essentially over and my boy wasn’t here to enjoy the changing of the seasons with me.  I had such visions of going to those football games with Andrew and enjoying the fun atmosphere. 

Well, here we are……a year later.  It’s hard to believe.  I certainly would love to be chasing a little boy around at the Deep Run football game tonight with my husband, but I’m not quite as sad as I was then.  God has truly been faithful, restoring our hope and healing the hurt slowly but surely.  I’m so thankful for that.  Sorry for the random tangent!

As you may have noticed from the title of this post, I’ve been thinking a lot about names.  As many of you know, we’ve actually already named our precious little girl.  It took us so much longer to name Andrew, but we knew from early on in our marriage what we wanted to name our little girl if God chose to bless us with one.  So, the very day we learned that our baby was a girl, we pretty much declared that her name would be………..  Savannah Elizabeth Eddins. 

When we were choosing boy names, Kevin and I went back and forth the entire time.  I felt this pressure to name our son something meaningful yet masculine.  And of course, it needs to sound good and flow well too!  I had no idea naming our first child would be so hard.  I guess the reality of parenthood was upon us we took one of our first responsibilities as parents very seriously. 

So, about 8 weeks before Andrew’s birth, we officially decided on Andrew Ryan.  We both liked the name Andrew and felt like it was strong yet meaningful. I also have a tendency to prefer somewhat uncommon or not overused names.  Although Andrew is nothing odd or out of the ordinary necessarily, I didn’t know any little boys with that name, which I sort of liked. 

We also really liked the meaning of Andrew.  It is of Greek origin, and means “strong, manly, courageous.”  I love that!  I just felt like that fit our boy so well.  I also liked that Andrew is a Bible name, and that Andrew was the first of Jesus’ disciples.  How cool is that?  It was always our prayer that our son would be a follower of Christ, so this was so meaningful.  We chose Andrew’s middle name, Ryan, because that is Kevin’s middle name.  I have always loved family names for middle names, and I love the idea of our son sharing his father’s middle name. 

I wish I could say we thought long and hard about our daughter’s name, but it really wasn’t like that this time around.  I thought of the name early in our marriage, and Kevin completely fell in love with it.  So, when we found out we were having a girl, there was no changing Kevin’s mind.  I did mention a couple other possibilities the day or so after our ultrasound, but he kept telling me that we could use them for our next girl.  It was basically a done deal.  There really isn’t any special meaning behind our choosing Savannah.  Again, we like that it’s original and unique, but there’s really nothing else behind it.  We just love it!  In fact, Savannah is of Spanish origin and means “treeless plain.” Hmmmmm, no deep meaning there!  Some people may wonder if we have any special ties to Savannah, Georgia, but we definitely don’t.  Although I’ve heard wonderful things about that city, we’ve never even been there.  Perhaps we’ll have to trek down there once Savannah is here with us!!

As for her middle name, Elizabeth, that again is a family name.  It’s my great, great aunts middle name, my mother’s middle name, and also mine.  Elizabeth is also a Bible name, as she was the mother of John the Baptist and cousin of Mary, Jesus’ mother.  Pretty cool, huh?  But, what I just discovered the other day was that God has another reason in us choosing Elizabeth.  Elizabeth is of Hebrew origin and means “God’s promise or God is my oath.”  I got chills when I read this.  I truly believe that this little girl is God’s promise to Kevin and I.  As I have shared before, the Lord spoke to me back in December that we would conceive again, so I know that Savannah Elizabeth is proof of God’s promise to us.  And, this little girl has been dedicated to the Lord before she was even conceived. 

I just thought it was so neat how the Lord reminded me of his faithfulness to us in the name we chose for our daughter, even though I didn’t even know the actual meaning behind it.  What a cool God he is!  He certainly is a God of details and I don’t believe for a minute that it was an accident that we chose this little girl’s name years before we would even understand the meaning behind it. 

I’d love to hear how some of you may have come up with the names of your children.  Like I said before, boys names were so hard for us and now that our girl name has been taken, we’re going to be back to square one when it comes time to name another baby!  I can’t even wrap my head around that yet anyway!  I’m so grateful for the 2 that I have now, I can’t even fathom being blessed with more!