Heritage and Naming Ethiopian Children

I found this on the internet and thought it was pretty important. We had decided to make his given name his middle and then give him a new first name. I realized that his "last" name is also his birth father's first name. Now, I think that our little man will end up with 4 names because I don't want to drop any of the two names he has.

Heritage is very important and traditionally a child grows up to know at least 7 generations of his / her ancestors. For example a child named Abraham Alemayehu Zerihun carries 3 generations of names, his own (Abraham), his father's (Alemayehu) and his grandfather's (Zerihun).

Why are children named like this?

One reason is that many people have the same first name so the father's name identifies them like the English "Robert - son" = Robertson.

The grandfather's name adds to this and also shows heritage which is important in determining status - the more names you know the higher your status in the community.

Another reason for naming children this way is that when Ethiopian men plan to marry, traditionally they send a delegation of 6 elders to the girl's family to negotiate the marriage. This negotiation includes determining if the bride and groom are related. Both families must provide the male lines of both sets of parents back 7 generations. Therefore, it is the names that are handed down through the generations that are the evidence of their family line.

grace

please make sure you've read my post on October 5th otherwise this one will not make sense. :-)


Yesterday in church there was a couple visiting from Kenya. They are staying with Thom and Shari who are the ones who started the orphanage in Kenya. Keith, who's American, shared some prayer needs. He introduced his wife. Her name is GRACE.

hmm . . .

As you know, we are not requesting a specific gender. We know God has a baby for us and just like with Liam and Gabriel, it wasn't up to us what gender our kids would be. We had a girl's name picked out when we were expecting Liam. We changed our minds and picked out a new name when we were expecting Gabriel. We also have a couple other boy names picked out. However, we have NO idea if we'll even want to use these names as our baby will probably have a name. I know a lot of people will change the baby's name to an American name, others might give them a new first name and make their given name their middle name. I don't know what we'll do. I don't think we'll even be able to think about that until we see a picture of our baby and know the gender and name. However . . . a very dear friend gave me this black angel as a gift today. It brightened my day (after my last post). Adoption is dear to her heart too. Anyway, as I walked over to my wall (where I display all my Willow Tree figurines) I looked at the bottom of this angel. It is called "The Angel of Grace". Hmmm, Grace? I looked at Dave before placing the angel in it's spot and said, "Maybe this is a sign. Maybe our baby is a girl and we should name her Grace." Dave smiled and said, "I like that name."