What's in a Name?

Many of you have been asking about the meaning of our daughter's name... here is an explanation. 

We had quite the task when it came to picking a name for our little one! Yet the difficulty was by our own doing. In countries around the world names are incredibly significant and the meaning of a name is not taken lightly.  We decided that when it came to naming our children we wanted their names to have a significant meaning… and thus the difficult journey began.

Who would have thought that it would be so difficult to find a good name when you have a baby name book with over 100,000 names and meanings listed, not to mention the endless resources found on the internet.  Even so, this proved to be a daunting task.  Why… well, because many of the really neat names have rather lame meanings and many of the wonderful meanings have really weird names (mostly from another country)! 

What exactly was our goal in finding a name?  We wanted the first name to represent the season of life our Lord has us in right now and for the middle name to be a Godly character trait we desire for our child to grow in.  The difficulty of this task was doubled by the fact that we decided to wait to find out the gender of our little one until birth and we were thus trying to pick both a boy and a girl name.

We did not actually decide on our daughter’s name until about 14 hours after she was born.  Her name is actually one that we had come up with soon after we found out that we were expecting, we simply hadn’t decided to definitely use it until the day after she was born.

And so to answer the question many of you have been asking… why Abionah? 

Abionah (pronounced with the long "o" sound) is a Yoruban name, though we had no idea what this was when we actually picked it.  Apparently   the Yoruban people are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa (check it out on Wikipedia).  Abionah means “born during a journey”.  We thought this was quite appropriate for describing the season of life we are in as we have had quite the journey since Jon graduated!  Since May we have moved out of our first home, traveled to China, visited family, moved to Madison North Carolina, started our first “real” job, moved into a temporary rental house and then moved again into our current house, met new people and had our first child… yes, certainly a season of journeying for us!

And for her middle name, Grace, well, that is rather self explanatory.  This is one of the Godly character traits we pray our daughter will develop over her life. 

Abionah Grace, one who was born during a journey!  May she grow in grace!

P.S. – A Note on Baby Stuff

Many of you have been asking what we still need for our little one.  Funny enough, we actually didn’t even have diapers at home when she came!  We figured we would have plenty of time to prepare since she wasn’t due until March 26^th!  Since then the community around here has been absolutely amazing!  There are still a number of items that we are lacking though.  For those who are interested, we have updated our registries at both Babies R Us and JC Penny.  I will attach the links for both. 

Thank you so much for your desire to help!  We cannot imagine trying to provide all of the things a baby uses on our own, what a blessing you have been! 

For those who need it, our current address is

120 Wendy Dr.

Madison, NC 27025

http://www.babiesrus.com

http://www2.jcpenney.com/jcp/GR2_RegistryList_View.aspx?storeRegNo=00142116&CmCatId=70677