At the gazebo in York:
Mary K, Sarah, Erica, Anne
In an e-mail I wrote last night, I explained to a friend the K in Mary K, and that led me to think about my girls and their awesome names. In the Old Testament (and many other ancient cultures) names often described character traits. So, in naming our girls, we came up with names that described character traits that we were trusting God to work in them.
I had Anne first. I wanted Ann with an e because it looks better and sounds different than without the e. Then we settled on Anne Katherine. We were informed often that it should be Katherine Anne and not Anne Katherine because "you always put the shorter name in the middle." But she was always Anne.
Anne means full of grace, mercy, and prayer. Katherine means pure.
While she was never called “Annie” I did have a nickname for her, Annie Kathy the blues singer. Don’t know why, just always thought Annie Kathy was a great name for a blues singer....
I had the name Elizabeth picked out, but no first name. We wanted this as her middle name because we were concerned people would shorten this to Beth or Liz or Lizzie and we wanted her to be Elizabeth. One Wednesday night, as we were dropping Anne off at the nursery, the worker asked about names for our soon to come second child. We explained our dilemma and she suggested Sarah Elizabeth. We liked it immediately! And, it was always Sarah with the h. Sounds different and looks better!
Sarah Elizabeth means a princess dedicated to God.
I had a friend in Hawai’i named Keala and I always liked the name. Mary has her Mom’s name and I thought it would be cool if we continued this tradition – three generations of Mary! I thought Mary K had a nice ring to it. But, and this is important, it is not pronounced Mary KAY, but rather, MARY Kay.
Mary is from marah and means bitter. Oh my. Keala is Hawaiian and means the way or the path. So our intent was, even when life is hard, she will walk in the Way.
We weren’t necessarily finished after out first three, but weren’t planning on another one yet. But we began to have reason to think Mary was pregnant. She was volunteering at the local crisis pregnancy center at the time. She went up there one day and called me shortly after she arrived. I answered the phone, “Hello.” (This was before caller ID.) She said, “Hello, DAD.” It was true! We were blessed with another one! Right away, I came up with the name Jane. It is the feminine form of John and means God’s gift. I wanted to name her Leilani Jane, but this did not fly. So I began to search for an acceptable equivalent of Leilani. I found Erica. It means, princess, conqueror, overcomer. Amen. We were good to go.
I was always certain that we would have girls. One reason was we never had a boy’s name. Well, I had one, Coleus Joel. But for some reason, that was never acceptable.
I love my girls. And I’m convinced they have awesome names. My grandchildren have some awesome names as well, but I will leave that explanation to their mothers!
My girls as beautiful young women:
Mary K, Erica Jane, Anne, Sarah
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