babies!

lately i have been thinking about this whole idea of baby names (i think because one of the couples at church named their son Andrew)and for some reason today while i was showering i was thinking of the significance of names.


my name is Andrew Jonathan Ratiani.

Andrew means Man. its the greek version. the hebrew version is Adam. adam kalanquin and i are pretty similar. the thing is that the greek version from which we derive andrew has more of a warrior sense to it. i'm slightly more violent that adam is.

most people i know really fit their names, or have some connection. lauren means by the bay, or laurel plant. my dad used to sail. alot. joshua means "yahweh is salvation" or "the lord saves." and he is a pastor, son of a pastor and brother of a future pastor. josh's father inlaw, doug swinburne is not only a pastor himself, but also has a brother,nephew, three son inlaws (including josh) and a fatherin-law who are all pastors. pastors typically preach that God saves...
there are others i could mention but not all of them are nice...

so i want to think about what i want my kids to be named. i got in the shower and decided i had though enough about baby names. then i started thinking about how i was named. there is a reason my parent chose my name, but theres a littel short story first.

see, i'm the fourth child my mother gave birth to, and i'm one of her three children. there was Joshua Daniel (named after the old testament characters) then Lauren Michelle ( i'm not sure why they chose Lauren, but i think Michelle had to do with it being the female version of Michael, the angel, but don't quote me on that) then there was the third.
his name was David Andrew Ratiani. my mother went into labor at around the five month mark, and he didn't survive. my parents chose to name him David because they wanted him to be a man after God's own heart. the Andrew part was chosen to be his first name by my siblings, but my parents still went with David. Andrew was chosen after the disciple.

when they had me they named me Andrew because that was his middle name. my middle name is Jonathan because Jonathan was David best friend in the bible.

i'm named in memory of him.

at first when i found this out i thought "okay, that's kinda cool to know why they chose that"

lately i have been thinking about this whole idea of baby names (i think because one of the couples at church named their son Andrew) and i decided to name my first son David. now freshman year the first roommate i met was David yang, and he was a great guy. sophomore year i roomed with D-Rush, whose real name is David (even though no one calls him that but his girlfriend) but neither of them are the reason. if they both were named Josh, my first born son's potential name would not be josh, even though my brother's name is josh.

David and the hebrew word for beloved (which, when written with English letters,is Yedid, and what i want to get tattooed on my wrist) come from the same word, but thats only a small part

David was a man after God's own heart. he screwed up, and made horrible mistakes, but he still feared the lord more than he feared man, and God told his descendants way down the lineage that He was sparing their lives because of David. i want that for my kids (when i have them)


then i got thinking about a middle name for the aforementioned kid named David. so far i'm thinking either some old testament prophet, or Adam. probably something biblical though.
although i might pull out an old family tradition from my fathers mother's side and make his middle name Gordon.

i also figured out a good girls name that i really like, but i forget what it was.

(edit): i remembered the girls name. Hannah. she was the mother of sammuel, and even after praying for something for so long she finally had a son, and gave him to God. i think thats a cool thing. also all the people i know named hannah are cool people. plus hannah and Ratiani don't clash.

with my last name i can't do anything ending in an "ee' sound. rhyming with my last name is no good.
neither is a name that starts or ends with an R. so Hannah and David both work.