Saturday, April 20, 2013

What's in a name?

A friend of mine asked me if we were planning on naming our future children virtues as well. Since that was never our intention I decided I would share the story of how we came up with the names Charity and Harmony.
When I was five my mom had a very difficult pregnancy. She was on bed rest for months because the placenta was tearing away from her uterine wall putting the baby at extreme risk. At thirty weeks my mom went into labor. She went to the hospital and while there a nurse took my mother off of the monitors because she was pregnant and wanted to monitor herself. Everything about that is completely unbelievable. It went undetected that the placenta tore away completely from her uterine wall. She didn't make it and was still born. My father had a very sweet spiritual experience following her death. Because of that and our knowledge of the Temple and it's sealing powers we know that she is very much a part of our family now and forever. She was named and buried in the Provo cemetery. Her name is Charity.
I never intended naming my baby after her. In the months of my pregnancy leading up to the birth of the girls Chuck and I poured over baby books and name websites. One night during our search I was resting on the couch while Chuck was making dinner. I read interesting names I liked out loud and he would generally shoot them all down. I came across the name Charity and felt so strongly that was one of the names meant for one of our girls that I cried. I read the name to Chuck and he replied he had always liked that name. We decided unanimously then and there that Charity was one of the names. It is so special to me to remember my sister in such a sweet, touching way.
I wanted the names of our twins to sounds good together. We picked Charity so early on we both thought we were having as boy and a girl. Chuck has always wanted to name his first born son Charles after him, his father and his grandfather. I thought Charley and Charity would be so sweet together. When we found out we were having two girls I thought Charley would still be really cute for a girl but Chuck wasn't interested in that. We were back to the drawing board. With the significance behind Charity's name and my desire to have the names sound good together our choices were very limited. I searched family history books for any names I liked. We couldn't agree on anything. Chuck mostly just shot down all of my ideas. My mother's maiden name is Harman. I thought of using that as inspiration to name our other daughter Harmony but spell it with an o to make it easier on her. I also loved the double reference in her name of a musical application as well. It took a while but Chuck warmed up to it.
Chuck didn't like the fact that each of the names "sounded like a sermon" but he got over it.
There was then a matter of which baby we would give each name. We both thought we would have one red headed baby and one brunette baby. We unanimously decided we would name the red head Charity and the brunette Harmony.
We didn't decide middle names until the hospital. Chuck's grandmothers name is Ruth. We both loved that name and thought it went beautifully with Harmony.It's special to have her named after her great grandmother. Charity's middle name, Ava, had zero significance. We just liked it and it was on our short list of names we both loved.
So there you have it. We never intended on them both being named after virtues so we won't be sticking with that theme in the future.

1 comment:

  1. Beautiful names. Beautiful story. Thanks for sharing, plus it's good to write down those things . . . kid like to know later! :)

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