Choosing a name for our little girl was a far greater task than naming our son, Gabriel. In fact, Gabriel's name came to me in a dream when I was trying to guess the name of our friends' unborn baby boy...it turned out my dream was not accurate for their child but it was the perfect fit for our little boy. His name means "The mighty warrior of God."
For our daughter, I looked at cutsie names, my husband looked for meaning, and together Jeremey and I spent hours perusing the Internet naming sites, going through each letter of the alphabet...sounding out names and finding ways for a 4th grader to make fun of each of one.
I would try to narrow our list by having each of us choose our top three...each time we did this our top three were different and so our giant list remained. Then one night, we had some space to just talk about our little girl, and Jeremey brought up the name Neriyah. I'm sure it had been on "his list" before but this time I heard it in a new way. I heard the meaning "burning lamp of God" and knew that these were the words that I wanted spoken over her life.
It was shortly after, we picked her name, that we found out that she may have Down Syndrome. Together, we reaffirmed that no matter who she is that our greatest hope is that her life will reflect the meaning of her name.
Some of you may have wondered how we chose her middle name, Scott. In a previous post, I mentioned that my parents lost their little boy, my brother, in the 39th week. Growing up, we went to his grave. On the stone it reads "Baby Boy Pearson." As I got older, it was important to me to understand why my brother was left unnamed. I found out that in fact he was given a name but in the 70's it wasn't a common practice to place the name on the headstone. As Jeremey and I discussed names (before we knew boy or girl) we were clear that we wanted my brother's name for the middle name of our child to carry forward an oral tradition of his memory.
And so this is the story of how...Neriyah (Burning light of God) Scott (in memory of my brother) King (although she'll be our princess) got her name.
For our daughter, I looked at cutsie names, my husband looked for meaning, and together Jeremey and I spent hours perusing the Internet naming sites, going through each letter of the alphabet...sounding out names and finding ways for a 4th grader to make fun of each of one.
I would try to narrow our list by having each of us choose our top three...each time we did this our top three were different and so our giant list remained. Then one night, we had some space to just talk about our little girl, and Jeremey brought up the name Neriyah. I'm sure it had been on "his list" before but this time I heard it in a new way. I heard the meaning "burning lamp of God" and knew that these were the words that I wanted spoken over her life.
It was shortly after, we picked her name, that we found out that she may have Down Syndrome. Together, we reaffirmed that no matter who she is that our greatest hope is that her life will reflect the meaning of her name.
Some of you may have wondered how we chose her middle name, Scott. In a previous post, I mentioned that my parents lost their little boy, my brother, in the 39th week. Growing up, we went to his grave. On the stone it reads "Baby Boy Pearson." As I got older, it was important to me to understand why my brother was left unnamed. I found out that in fact he was given a name but in the 70's it wasn't a common practice to place the name on the headstone. As Jeremey and I discussed names (before we knew boy or girl) we were clear that we wanted my brother's name for the middle name of our child to carry forward an oral tradition of his memory.
And so this is the story of how...Neriyah (Burning light of God) Scott (in memory of my brother) King (although she'll be our princess) got her name.
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