Deciding On A Name

Soon after deciding to move forward with the hope and faith that our baby was going to be okay, we came to the conclusion that he needed a name. We decided that it would be more real and more personal if we could specifically petition for him by name in our prayers to Heavenly Father for his life and well-being.

But what should his name be?

I have always been a believer that a person’s name goes a long way in defining who they are. So picking a name for our son was of utmost importance to me because of the situation that we were in.

Bekah’s family has “a thing” for Biblical names. Bekah and 4 of her sisters all have names from the Old Testament: Sarah, Miriam, Esther, and Hannah. The fifth sister, Kathryn, received the “family name.” So Bekah was inclined towards a Scriptural name.

Before we knew of Nathan’s condition, I had gone through the Scriptures and picked out a few random (and according to Bekah extremely odd) names in an effort to dissuade her of this tradition (Ziba was my name of choice for a long time). But after knowing of our son’s condition, his name took on a lot of new importance for me.

After some debate, we had narrowed the selection of names down to four. Bekah had nominated James (in honor of her father) and Joshua (Old Testament prophet). I was inclined toward either Jacob (Book of Mormon prophet) or Jonathan (dear and devoted friend of King David from the Old Testament).

Eventually, we settled on Jonathan.

We were impressed by the name Jonathan. Both for who it represented (if you are unfamiliar with the story of Jonathan and David it is more than worth it to read) as well as its meaning, “Jehovah has given” that we discovered by researching its etymology (origin and meaning) as we tried to whittle our list down to “the perfect name.”

However, when we paired the name “Jonathan” with our choice for a middle name, the whole thing just seemed too long. We tried a couple other middle names, but they didn’t seem right either. That’s when the inspiration came.

“What if we name him Nathan?”

As much as we liked the name Jonathan, Nathan just “felt right” to us. It’s the root of the name Jonathan and has the same etymology – “God has given.” If our son was going to be allowed the opportunity to live, then it would be because “God had given” us that blessing.

Yes, Nathan was to be his name.