What’s In A Name?
(More pictures uploaded to flickr if you’re interested…)
Nancy and my name choices for our baby were a closely guarded secret up until now (though the boy name will still be kept in a sealed file for potential use at a later date.) I know you were all on the edge of your seats to find out the name, and most o f you went “oh… that’s it??” when we finally let it be known… but I suppose you are still curious about the significance of the name.
To be honest, it was “randomly” chosen during a name brainstorming session. I threw the name out there and it was a “that is it!” moment. We loved the way it sounded. Once we had decided, we realized several significances to the name (I love working backwards like that. It’s how we did (r)evolve, which by the way, is coming no later than Aug 11.)
My grandmother’s name was Lena. She passed away a number of years ago and is sorely missed by our family (especially my grandfather, my only living grandparent.) I think this is a beautiful way of honoring her. We then had to pick a middle name that fit just as well. Rose. Rose was the name of Nancy’s great-grandmother, and just flows very nicely with the name Elena.
Once we had agreed and finalized the name we wondered what in the heck it meant! A quick search revealed that “Elena” is a Russian (or possibly Spanish) rendering of Helen, that’s right, as in Helen of Troy. Some further research revealed that the Greek (that is, the original) spelling of Helen of Troy’s name transliterates to “E-L-E-N-A” (roughly) in English. In Greek if a word starts with an “E” it (usually) is pronounced with an “H”. I have caught myself pronouncing the H from time to time (Helena). Funny stuff.
Helen of Troy, the face that launched 1000 ships…
Elena: (Greek) torch, corpusant, RADIANT LIGHT, SHINING LIGHT…
Yup, that will definitely do for a name. Our hope and prayer is that some day she becomes a shining light for God. Right now, she is definitely a shining point of creation :).
Also, Nancy loves the latino culture, and perhaps some day we will end up in some sort of mission to a Latino population. Elena is certainly a latin name. It fits well.
Finally, Nancy and I (but mostly me) got a kick out of the fact that Elena Heerema looks and sounds roughly like Sindarin Elvish… (Tolkien fans rejoice).
I love you, Elena.
Congratulations Matt and Nancy! What a beautiful daughter you have; what a beautiful great niece you’ve given us. She’s gorgeous and we love, love, love her already! We can’t wait to meet her in person. We love you all. xoxo