A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold Proverbs 22:1
When
we were anticipating Ella, naming her blind sighted me a bit. Years of
doodling kids names went out the window and suddenly I was blank.
completely blank. I liked a few names. I loved the name Lucy, however
there were two names I had come to find out that were completely out of
the question for Binyam, Lucy was one of them. All his life he grew up
hearing about the Lucy bones found in Ethiopia which evolutionists link
to ape's. He just couldn't separate the two so Lucy was out. Before we
knew if Ella was a boy or a girl I had brought up the name Xavier that I
liked a lot. That was OUT in a big way as the literal translation for
that name is "God" as in Thee God. This is my child God. Not gonna
fly.....That left me with nothing. Binyam wasn't too much help because
of his unfamiliarity with American names. I might have said Esmerelda
and that might have worked for him. I did try looking for an Ethiopian
name. On the flip side that didn't work for me. I tried "what's the word
for..." diamond, sun, love, ruby...you name it and it all sounded like
letters all jumbled together. Finally one day I was watching TV and
heard the name Ella given to a character. I really liked it. I looked
into the meaning and found that it is the Spanish word for "she", like
the complete sum and total of a girl. She. Binyam liked the sound but at
the time had a hard time pronouncing it. He would try, really hard,
overly hard, to say the "E". I told someone about that at work and they
said to tell him to forget the "E" totally and just say "L" which is
exactly how you pronounce the name L-a. We choose the middle name Grace
for the complete meaning of, she's grace. Ella Grace.
Ezra
was a bit different. His name came to us fast and furious. When I found
out I was pregnant with him I just knew we were to name him Ezra.
Briefly we thought about other names but we both knew he was meant to be
Ezra. We weren't as sure about the middle name. I had to do a little
research on that. I Went through baby name blogs like crazy. I actually
came across his middle name on a baby name site. It stuck out because it
was listed as Amharic which is Binyam's native language. I double
checked with Binyam about the meaning just to be sure the site hadn't
skewed it. Taye, means "he has been seen by God". Ezra means "helper" So
together the meaning is "he has been seen by God a helper". Ezra Taye.
Finally
Ella and Ezra do not share my last name nor do they share Binyam's.
Between the four of us Ezra and Ella share the same last name which are
different than both Binyam's and I's. Firstly in the Ethiopian culture
women do not change their name when they get married. Names are passed
from father to child. Binyam's dad's name is Worku Degafu. His Dad's
first name becomes Binyam's last name. Binyam Worku. His children become
Ella and Ezra Binyam. There is no surname or family name. I was worried
at the hospital if they would actually let me do this. I think the
exact words of the nurse referring to naming Ella was, "you can name
your child George Bush, I'm not going to stop you." Because I value
naming so much I wanted to make sure that even though Binyam lost just
about everything else when he moved here that his own name wasn't one of
them. I do thank Bethany College of Missions for giving me the cultural
awareness to cast off my ethnocentric ways and be humble enough to
prefer and defer to another culture not my own.
So a good name has been chosen. May the loving favor of God follow them all the days of their lives.
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