When we were pregnant with Faith and Thomas, naming them was so much fun! Faith's name we chose because it was such a journey to finally be expecting her after so much loss... We wanted a name that declared God's faithfulness, and Faith seemed to fit the bill! lol. We also like how it sounded with our last name and all that jazz.
Thomas was tougher. We knew he was a boy, and boys names were a lot harder for us to agree on. Any name I liked, Dave thought I had "made up" (and I promise, they were not unusual names!). Most of the names he liked held some sort of negative associations for me, or I thought they didn't sound right. We finally settled on Thomas Aidan, or possible Aidan Thomas, and decided to see when we met him whether he seemed like a Thomas or an Aidan. Name meaning didn't really play into it at all.
When we got Bereket's proposal, one of the first things we did was look up the meaning of his name. We knew that names in Ethiopia are usually chosen based on their meaning, and we wanted to be sure his name had a positive meaning (I have heard of names that mean things like "bringer of misfortune" and we didn't want that spoken over his life). We were delighted to learn that his name meant "Blessing" and felt that was so appropriate. As well, it had been his name for 6 whole years, so we felt it was most appropriate to keep it. We decided to add a middle name of our choosing. We decided on Samuel, which means "God has heard." How suitable! He has indeed heard our prayers!
All this talk of name meanings got me curious what "Thomas" means... I looked it up, and discovered to my surprise that it means "twin". How unbelievable that 6.5 years ago, we chose a name for our son that reflected he has a brother born only 2 weeks earlier across the globe! I honestly had goosebumps when I discovered this...
When we met Bereket's enat and cousin, we asked how she chose his name. They told us that his great-aunt, who would have sort have been the "matriarch" of the family, chose Bereket, because they wanted him to be a blessing in the lives of the people he encountered. They asked if we would be keeping his name, or giving him a new name.
We told them we would keep Bereket as his first name, and add the name Samuel as his middle name. When we said this, there was a sudden flurry of conversation in Amharic and I heard "Samuel" repeated several times. I wondered what the excitement was, and hoped we hadn't inadvertently picked a name that was offensive or something.
It turns out that Samuel was the name that the cousin had wanted for him! She is protestant, and liked the story of Samuel in the Bible, but the aunt wanted an Orthodox name, so they chose Bereket. But she was so amazed that we had "coincidentally" chosen the name she had picked... I was also amazed, but almost not surprised, as God has continually been revealing to me that he is forming our family exactly the way he intends...
So that is our second "goosebump" name story... I love these little details that just keep popping up! As Bereket's cousin said, God is good, all the time!
(PS - If you are wondering why B's enat seemed to have so little say in the whole name situation, I think that her young age and the circumstances of his birth meant that the older women in the family sort of "took over". I believe this is pretty typical in their culture.)
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