Adventures in Names

"He's a little boy with a BIG name!!!!"

That is what I am expecting to hear for pretty much the rest of his life.  Our only hope and prayer is that he lives up to the name, for he has big shoes to fill.

Naming our littles has ALWAYS been a bit of a process for us.  We really like family names and we really like Biblical names.  That is important to us.  We want to have a story to tell that particular child about the name we picked out specifically for them.  Our oldest is named after his grandfathers and you don't get much more Biblical then John and Michael!  When we used both those names we did briefly think, what if we have another boy?  Do we want to use both names for the first?  But the significance of the names was too overwhelming to ignore and another baby, much less another boy, was no guarantee!

Number two is named after her paternal great grandmother and her maternal grandmother.  It was important to us living in New York at the time, that we also put a Southern twist on the name making it a "double" name and thus "Clara Beth" was dubbed.  I did not know my husband's grandmother all that well, she passed away when we had only been married 3 years.  However, I can say from the stories I know of her and the personality that our daughter embodies so closely resembles that of Claramae, that I have no doubt they would be good friends to this day!

Thus brings us to little Edwin James.  He is named for two of his great grandfathers.  My mother's father is a very small, in stature, man with a huge personality.  I have many memories of him, as do others, being a story teller and commanding large rooms of people with his voice.  My husband's grandfather was a large, in stature, man with a quite, calming personality.  I remember him as a gentle giant and the perfect match to his wife, of which our middle is named for.  These personality traits we can only hope number three will embody.  Right now, he has definitely fit the bill as far as his size goes, being the largest of our three by 2lbs.  He also has quite the loud voice and does seem to command a room of people with it ;)

For us, names are a deeply personal endeavor.  We wanted to name our kids after people whom we could tell them about.  We wanted them to know they were named for someone special.  This is not to say that everyone should do that, but for us we wanted to continue the legacy of those who are special to us!  Naming a baby is definitely what I would consider a pretty neat adventure!

Are your kids named for someone special?  How did you choose their names?