What's In a Name?

Naming babies is serious business!
It's the one thing kids can't really ignore growing up, they can't really fight you much on it...it's the one thing you do that's gonna stick with them (in most cases) forever. It gets even more tricky to do though, when the gender is new to you AND when the baby you are naming will be your last. You want to get it right. You want to fall in love with it every time you say it. You want the meaning behind it to resonate so powerfully within your heart, it feels like you discovered the treasure of a name God Himself chose for this sweet infant.

We thought we had it figured out.
We chose Camberlynn for a girl's first name between what we call or angel baby, Chayne, and finding out we were blessed with rainbow baby Cuinn, almost 2 years ago. Middle names would come later. But we knew Camberlynn was IT if we ever had a little girl. Camberlynn is a rare, modern name said to mean, "amber, beautiful, and precious jewel" according to what we found after choosing it.

When we were surprised to learn God had blessed us with another baby, we landed on Camberlynn Etnie Grace. Etnie is such a rare name, it apparently doesn't have traceable roots, and has no known meaning. We love that kind of uniqueness in a name!! Grace, we chose because we felt she had to have meaning behind her name. And Grace serves as a reminder to give it and receive it, to accept God's blessings of mercy and love.
We were basically decided. And we felt prepared, when we learned and was a girl after all.

But then I happened across an article that caught my eye.  (http://www.mothering.com/articles/11-irish-names-cant-say-sound-lovely/)
I read through the names, and the first one really struck me. Aibhlinn (pronounced Ave-leen... Ave like Avenue). It was beautiful. But we were decided and loved the names we'd picked out. The few people I'd shared her name with heard, "We're like 99% sure she'll be _____."
Still, I was gonna save the article and show Trent. It's been a busy time, so I hadn't had the opportunity to whip out the article. But strangely, it kept showing up.
I'm a firm believer God uses a variety of signs and things to direct and guide us, not just directly answered prayers. So the 3rd or 4th time it showed up, I was finally in the same room as Trent and showed him. I told him, "It's not like we're gonna change our minds or anything, but I love the first one!" He used it in place of the middle names we'd picked and said her whole name a couple of times. I fell more and more in love with it every time he said it. I couldn't shake it. And Trent loved it too.
We hemmed and hawed overnight and part of the next day. But I just couldn't shake the name. It felt so right. Aibhlinn is Gaelic (which we love) and means, "longed for, hoped for" ...No truer statement could be made about this sweet girl and she isn't even here to know yet. We still love Etnie though, so we broke all kinds of norms in deciding on this girl's name.

She's got 3, before you count her last name. We don't care much about confusing spelling or mispronounciation because 3 of the 6 of us have our first names either mispronounced or misspelled (or both) regularly. And our last name is ALWAYS getting messed up. So for us, it needed to feel and sound right. It didn't need to be common, well liked by others, popular or anything like that. It just needed to resonate.

We've decided she will be Camberlynn Etnie Aibhlinn (Ave-leen) Deitrick. It's a mouthful. It's weird (*unique*)...but we love it. The meaning suits. The sound isn't quite as fluid as Etnie Grace, but is still timeless and elegant. She'll go by Camber. 💚