What's in a name?

A lot if you're like us. We have several naming traditions and it seems to get more complicated with each child. We named our first son after Big D which began the tradition of naming our children after family members. Then when we had our first daughter we decided to name her after my mother. I had always loved the name Hannah so was going to use my mom's name as her middle name, but Mom preferred her name be the first name and Hannah didn't sound nearly as good as a follow-up to my mom's name so we ditched the Hannah and started the awful tradition of calling our kids by their middle names.

It was only natural to name our second daughter after my mother-in-law, but now we had yet another tradition to follow. Our oldest daughter's middle name, that we called her by, also held special spiritual significance for us. We searched and searched and finally settled upon a name for our second daughter that when put together with my mil's actually meant something special. But now we had inadvertantly started a third naming tradition, at least for our girls. Both daughters in addition to being named for family members and having a name of spiritual significance, also had names that began with the letter G.

When we adopted our fourth child, second son we decided to name him after my dad. You've probably noticed by now that we had also started taking turns naming our kids after Big D's side of the family and then mine. Then when our fifth child came along it was my father-in-law's turn to have one of our kids named after him. The only problem was our fifth child turned out to be a girl, so... we went back to my side and named her for my two grandmothers. I'm also named for my grandmothers so her name is similar to mine, as well.

You can imagine how concerned I was about being able to come up with a name for this baby, especially if she had turned out to be a girl. Thank goodness we found out today we're expecting another son! That simplifies things. We know his first name will be after my father-in-law, but what about his middle name that we'll call him by? We have no idea! And now we have a whole house full of little opinions on the matter. Past kid favorites include Firebob, Clifford, and Crack-in-the-eyeball. Needless to say we're taking their suggestions with a grain of salt, but it does rain on my parade when they hate the names I come up with.

Big D and I had some fun today perusing Purtitan names. Our personal favorite was
If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned, nicknamed Damned for short. That's a little radical even for us. Well, maybe for a middle name:). Seriously, we're having trouble. Big D comes from a big family and we love Bible names, but also want to be somewhat original (and no, I already told Big D we're not naming our son Zebedee!) Not Moses, either. Really, I don't think Big D takes this very seriously. I would love to hear your suggestions. I liked the idea of naming him after a Reformer, but not Luther. I'm sorry. I'm indebted to the guy, but we already have one Lu around our house and isn't that enough, really? We need a cute sounding Bible name or Reformer name that's not terribly over-used. Please help!