When I was growing up I spent a good deal of time finding names I liked. I always named my animals and knew I would someday have children to name, so I considered it a wise investment to select good names for future use. I enjoyed many hours collecting both first and last names and sharing them with friends and relatives. Little did I know how useless that collection would be.
When my husband and I began our family and were sitting in the hospital discussing the name of our first child we were literally at our wits end. After nine months and two days, we had each exhausted our supply of names and could not agree on any of them. Over and over we went through the possibilities and each time we came up with a definite, “No way!” It seemed that all of my favorite names were all of his least favorite and vise versa. I thought we would never be able to name our child when, out of sheer desperation I began thinking of the book I had just been reading. It was the classic novel, “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austin. The main character in that book is Elizabeth. As soon as I said the name we both looked at each other to gauge the level of acceptance for the name. As we looked, hesitatingly, almost shyly, there didn't seem to be any feelings toward the name that would suggest rejection, so we pursued the name further, trying it on our last name and finding a middle name that fit. It was such a relief to find a name that we seemed to agree on that after just a couple of minutes of discussion, we agreed that this would be her name.
That said, you would think that the rest of our children were similarly difficult to name. However, what we learned that day about naming our children was not that we couldn't agree on names, but that each child had a name already and we just had to find it. I realize this may sound odd but the truth of the matter was brought home to us time and again.
Each of our children's names came in a different way and each time we came to the name, it was the only name we could agree upon. However, the most dramatic of all the naming came with our last child. I knew by then to wait for the name so I hadn't worried about it much. Then, during my pregnancy I had a dream in which my husband spoke just four words. He said, “His name is John.” I awoke feeling startled and surprised but I wasn't about to just tell him that I'd had a dream and I knew what the baby's name would be. And truthfully, I wasn't all that excited about naming my child John Smith. The only thing that would have been worse is if our last name had been Doe. So I told my husband that I'd had a dream in which he had told me the baby's name, but that he would have to find it out for himself and tell me while I was awake. He shrugged and there was no more discussion about it.
A month or two later, while spending an evening at home with our family, two of our children came into the room where the rest of us were sitting and announced that they had 'figured out' what the new baby's name was going to be. I was more than a little surprised by this declaration, but told them I was willing to hear them out. They then told how they had painstakingly read through the baby name book saying every name at the end of all of the family's names. Finally, after hours of work, they said, they had arrived at the 'only' name that would fit at the end of our family's names (more surprise on my part). Then, to my utter astonishment, the two children declared that the baby's name was none other than John.
Only a minute before this, out of curiosity, I had been looking up the meaning of the name John in another baby name book. In my astonishment upon their declaration I arose, and without answering the children, went to the kitchen. There on the window sill in big bold letters on my “Thought for the Day” calendar was the exact meaning for the name John that I had just read in my baby book. Finally I turned, acknowledged the children's discovery, told them of my dream and of the baby book meaning and threw my hands in the air and said, “His name is John”. And it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment