Thursday, January 29, 2009

What's in a name?

I really find names and their meanings interesting. Trey and I thought long and hard about our kids' names. We wanted them to have names that weren't overly common (yeah, I know, Ethan is probably in the top 10 right now, but I still love it.). We also didn't want their names to be so unusual, that they would sound weird or be too difficult to pronounce or spell.
I wanted to pass on my middle name, Nicole, to our daughter and also liked that my brother and I both have Greek names. When Trey told me that he wanted to name his daughter Cassandra, I was excited. It is Greek and sounded nice with Nicole. So, we now have Cassandra Nicole.
The boys names were tougher. There aren't a lot of Greek boy names that aren't too common, but also not "weird". Trey resorted to a baby name book and came across Elijah. He liked it and thought Ethan would go well with it since we wanted their first names to begin with the same letter. I loved both names and was excited to learn that they are both Hebrew. We gave them Greek middle names and ended up with Elijah Alexander and Ethan Christopher.
After we had named all of the kids, I got more interested in name meanings and was pleased with the meaning of the kids names.
Cassandra Nicole means "prophetess" of "victory of the people"
Elijah Alexander means "The Lord is my God" "defender of mankind"
Ethan Christopher means "steadfast" "Christ-bearer"

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