We think one of the scariest things about having a baby is the naming part. We’d like to think we have it harder than some, because of our cross-cultural, bilingual home. We’ve gingerly collected our babies’ names over the years, but now we are plumb out. We spent the last three on our new son.
Adam: son of the red earth, man
Fernando: brave traveler, adventurer
Courage: (figure it out)
The responses are always fun.
“Are you serious?” -Kenny
“Congrats. Take Courage, my friend.” -PD
“Congratulations. We were discussing his name over breakfast, and could imagine when a bully is picking on him. He’ll just stare at the bully and say quietly, “You don’t want to mess with me. My middle name is Courage!” and the bully just slinks away with his tail between his legs…” -Andrew
“He has a lot of names!” -Cookie Joy
“You should hear the convo around here about all his names. 🙂 We like them!” -Naomi
Indeed. We would love to hear that completely candid convo at your house. At all your houses, in fact. In the meantime, we thought we’d shed a little light on how we named our kids. Without meaning to, Hj kind of named Ellie and Joy sort of named Adam.
I (Hj) got a dream, some years ago. In the dream God told me to name our baby Harper. Since we were pregnant at the time, this seemed something to take serious. Harper, though, wasn’t a name we both liked so we decided that it was just a dream and nothing else. We did not have a girl’s name yet but Ellie was one name we agreed on as being okay. We did try them out together that morning: Ellie Harper? Hmm… Maybe.
Later that day we did what every American does after church and went out for some Mexican food. While we were waiting to be seated, there was a little girl waiting with us and Joy asked her name. Ellie, the girl said. Now, normally you don’t ask people their middle name, but Joy did and it was Harper. Ellie Harper. We looked at each other and said: okay.
Then when our baby came out, we were flabbergasted that it was a girl. The boy’s name we were sure about, but the girl’s name… Are we really gonna name her Ellie Harper? We decided to sleep over it and maybe God, in His goodness, would write our baby name on the wall. When I woke up Joy told me I had talked in my sleep. My words? Ellie, Ellie, Ellie and Ellie. So it was: Ellie Harper Fousert.
I (Joy) also got a dream, some years ago. His name is Hj and he is a whole lot of good things, including a man of his word. Back in the day when we were dating, spending some time in Honduras, we went to visit a good friend who has a son named Fernando. When we were saying goodbye, Fernando wished us well on our upcoming wedding and said something you don’t hear everyday: “If you ever have a baby boy, name him after me!” I heard my Dutch fiancé call out, “Ok, we will!” as we took off in a cloud of dust. Here we are, 4 years later and we kept our promise, Fernando. We named our baby boy after you. Our brave adventurer!
From the very first day of morning sickness, this has been a challenging pregnancy. During the long, dark tunnel of lying on the couch, God whispered the word “courage” to me many times. That was before Prayer on the Steps, the Sad Goodbyes, and the Move to Colorado. Only God could have known how much courage I would need for some of those things, and He prepared and strengthened my heart. It became such a precious word to us that we put it on the birth certificate.
Adam was easy. We just opened the Bible!
