What's in a name?

In today's mail were two official documents that were much wanted...Elijah and Sedaya's legal name change papers.  They now officially have our last name!!!  And there is more to celebrate than that even;  this means I can finally apply for Child Tax Benefit for them (and for Josiah who we forgot to add a year and a half ago...oops) and get some free government money.  It also means that we can add them to our benefit plan so that their dental and prescriptions (which have been aplenty so far!) can be at least partially covered.  Today is a day to celebrate!

This name change thing was not simple though and although I have had the documents for months, I didn't actually file for it until last week, partly because it is difficult for me to get down to the Registry office without at least six kids in tow and partly because I was on the fence about what their legal names should be.  Sedaya's Ethiopian name was Eyerusalem (those of you who think you can pronounce that are pronouncing it wrong, there are two sounds in her name that are not sounds made in the English language and it is not much like it looks) and she for whatever reason, is not a big fan of her Ethiopian name.  I may have mentioned it on here before but she cries if one of our other kids calls her that name and says "no, Sedaya!"   In fact, she was insistent that Eyerusalem not be used even as a middle name.  So yes, we chose to give her a name that was easier to pronounce in Canada but we also do not want to take away the option for her to go by her Ethiopian name one day so we have kept it as her middle name (yes, even though she doesn't want us to...she is four and when she is twenty, she may feel differently).  Each of our girls have two middle names so we had originally chosen the name "Amariah" because we liked its meaning but then when th agency's bankruptcy happened and we didn't know if we would ever get to bring her home, something simpler, more to the point seemed in order so to that end, the official name of our daughter is:

Sedaya Eyerusalem Hope K.

Elijah's name was, believe it or not, even a more complicated decision.  His Ethiopian name is Yohannis which we quite like and which is very easy to spell and pronounce here in Canada so really there was no reason not to use it.  Early on, we were told that it was pronounced "Johannis" which is very similar to the name of our second oldest "Jonah" and Jonah was upset by that so when we were discussing names, we actually let Mackenzie and Jonah choose the name Elijah from a list we had but when we got to Ethiopia, we discovered that it was pronounced "Yohannis" and he seemed to suit the name so we were calling him Yohannis Elijah.  Somehow, before we arrived, Elijah had been told that when he came to Canada, he would be getting a new name and that name would be "John" like John the Baptist.  On the day that we left Ethiopia, we asked Elijah if he wanted his name in Canada to be Yohannis or Elijah and he said "John the Baptism".  Now, there is nothing wrong with the name John.  It actually sounds really good with our last name, probably because there are already so many of them.  Mark's dad is named John.  Mark's brother is named John and we have a nephew named Jon.  John is also even closer to the name Jonah that Yohannis is so we basically ignored the request and kept calling him Yohannis.  When we got to Canada, we called him Yohannis, our kids called him Elijah sometimes, Yohannis most of the time and then some days, he would tell us "no Yohannis, Elijah" and we would comply until he wanted to get rid of the Yohannis altogether but again, I wanted to keep it in his legal name so that at any point if he wants to start referring to himself by his Ethiopian name, he can.  Here's where it gets funny!  In our family, the boys only have one middle name while the girls have two but when it came time to fill out the paperwork, he wanted to be "Elijah John the Baptism" so in the interest of keeping the peace and of letting him have a say and bucking all my previous naming trends, the official name of our son is:

Elijah Yohannis John K.

(we left out "the baptism" part!)

Comments

[Aneta]

Good choices! I love your kids... and miss them!!!

[Shelley]

Remember to also get those SIN numbers and RESPs set up so you can start getting free money. Not sure if the older boys qualify, but Sedaya should be young enough to get the free money from the AB Govt. :)

[Denise]

Good call on "the baptism" part :) I love their names!!

[Sheri]

Beautiful names. Eyerusalem is in Mikiyas' family too. :)

[Laura]

Great story - they will love hearing about that when they are older. Beautiful names too. L

[Karen]

The naming is a tough decision. I'm glad you were able to figure it all out ~ and the names are great! (Lol... John the Baptism ~ our girls frequently mention that about his name too). Your back pay for child tax credit should be nice! Did you have to wait for name changes before applying? We didn't... although it'll be one more place to change names whenever we do get our legal name changes done.