Yes, we have chosen a name for our little man. This was so hard for us for many reasons. Even now I sort of wonder if our decision was right, but we are going to walk in it!
Sadly, I will not be disclosing his name of the blog. I will post it on FB, but I feel strange about any random person finding his name in a search. However, if you know us in real life and you read this post you will most likely be able to figure it out.
We have chosen to stick with his full Ethiopian name. No, this isn’t the name we were calling him before court, this is his full name. However, we are changing the way it is pronounced to make it a bit easier for Americans to say. The spelling will remain the same, so if he ever wants to go back to the Ethiopian version that would also be great This ET name is from the Bible, check out the "M" book after the book about the man who was in a fish :)
The reason it was so hard for us to decide on a name was that the name we have really liked now for well over a year was SO close to his ET name. Check out chapter 17 and 18 of 2 Chronicles and read of an “M” who was a missionary true to the Lord.
Many people told us to choose our favorite name as a first name and use his ET name as his middle name. Well, you can see how that would not work out very well.
Because our former favorite name has a unique spelling we decided to stick with the ET name and spelling and pronounce it much like the 2Chron name. We recognize that we can even call him the 2Chron name as a nick name, or a whole host of other nick names that come easily from his name. I am a HUGE nick name fan. Some don’t like them, but I have been a nick name “Shelly” my whole life and I see nothing wrong with it, but appreciate the option to go back to my full name as needed.
Another neat thing is that the meaning of the 2Chron name and our son’s name are the same. I personally believe that if we looked up 2Chron in an Amharic Bible our son’s name might be there. Yes, God has planned for him to be in our home with this name for a long time! We will continue to call him “M” on this blog for privacy purposes, at least until the adoption is final in the US, after that we will re-visit the issue.
His middle name is quite simple. We knew that “M” needed to be matched with a simple middle name, and when a first name ends with a strong “s” sound middle names are hard. Some people like to choose middle names based on a person in the child’s life like a grandparent. I personally have never been a huge fan of this, and will freely admit that while our son’s middle name is the same as my dad’s dad’s middle name and my mom’s, dad’s, dad’s first name, that was not a primary or secondary reason for the name choice. You see, I have long wanted to name our children after people in the Bible who walked with the Lord their whole lives. We are blessed that “J” (the disciple Jesus loved) sounds great with “M” :) The disciple Jesus loved is not the only special J! J is also the one who baptized Him and prepared the way for His ministry. There are MANY special theologians and pastors (Calvin, Edwards, and Piper to name a few) who also share this simple name. The writings and teaching of these men has helped us better understand God’s Word. Then of course there is the oldest son in our favorite TV show (Walton’s) who I have joked for months would share a name with our son. Don’t worry “boy” will not be added to our son’s middle name.
So as you can see, our son was named after
1. His Ethiopian Heritage
2.Men in the Bible who walked with the Lord (first and middle name)
3.My grandpa and great grandpa
4.Godly men who have ministered to us
5.AND (only joking) the oldest son in a certain TV show family!
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