Choosing a Name

If you know our history when it comes to naming our children it is a long drawn out process. Evangelia's name was decided when I was 36 weeks pregnant. Elijah's name was decided 2 days before he was born (I was 37 weeks pregnant) and our new little guy's name was decided 2 days before we had to send in our paperwork with his new name on it. We really want names with strong meaning and are meaningful to the time of our lives while we where pregnant with them. Evangelia Joy's meaning is Joyful messenger of Good News. We were in the process of coming this way when I was pregnant with her. We hope one day she will live out her name being a messenger of Good News too. Elijah Hobson Kanoa's name means my God is the Lord, Kanoa means Freedom. He is our overseas baby so it was important for us to declare who God is through his name. We desire for him to walk in Freedom of who he is in God and that he will boldly declare God is Yahweh. For our new son we decided to change his name. We know many families keep parts of their adopted children's old names. I understand there reasoning, it is a small often only thing they have of their past. Yet with the old name we feel there is abandonment and other things attached to it. So we spent a lot more time carefully picking a name for him that would declare promise and hope. We spent several hours with our local baby sitter trying to find a Chinese name that would also work in the language of our target people.

His new Chinese name will be what everyone calls him here and family can call him by his English name. His English name is easy for Chinese to say so he may also go by that name. We will see how it turns out.

We decided on Ian Seth WangDi Lambert. Ian means God is gracious, Seth means appointed and Wang(1st tone)Di(4th tone)our interpretation means God's kingdom is vast and it also means conqueror in the other language. With his Chinese name we wanted one that the characters are some what easy to write and a name with tones that are easier to say. We also needed a name that could work in both languages and have strong meanings. Not an easy task!

I like to think of it as God was gracious to give us Ian and He was gracious to Ian to bring him out of the situation he was in. Ian was appointed to be in our family and appointed for big things in his future.

So there you have it, a long explanation and a name finally!