Names

OK, about the names. Names were hard for us to decide. I think I was looking for something in the prophet family, but then none of them seemed quite right. We liked Elise for a girl, but then something didn’t seem quite right. We wanted assonance for the names. I liked Eve; Emily liked Ava. Ava is ridiculously common in the US now and I didn’t really love it, and Emily didn’t like Eve, which would have been only one syllable. In the end, we picked two-syllable names starting with E. We liked Eli a lot because it continues a run of figures from the Samuel books: David (brother), Jonathan, Samuel, Eli. We appear to be going in reverse order. If my kids have kids, maybe some Judges or Joshua figures? The middle names are both family names. All three of our kids have a grandparent name for the middle name. We’re sorry we couldn’t do all eight, but we like the three we’ve used, which are all classics.

So, we did settle on the names and I hope that our logic makes sense in explaining how we came to them. Since we didn’t finalize them until the babies arrived, we are still only learning them ourselves. Yesterday I took a beautiful video of Emily singing a favorite song to Eva, but then she botched it at the end by saying “Samuel” instead of “Eva.” I am remembering that we often mixed up Sam’s name with the cat. I hope that Eli and Eva are different enough that people won’t be continuously confusing them.

There are other continuities I am finding. I'm very grateful for Emily, Eva, and Eli. (And Sam too!) I think the names will lend themselves to translation. Literary and historical versions will no doubt appear over time. And now that they have the names, they can make them their own.