What's in a name?

Naming children is not our strong suit as a couple. Heck, we could hardly agree on what to name our dogs! Needless to say, naming an adopted child from a foreign country has proven to be the hardest one yet!!

I started a list of names years ago. When we decided to adopt, to be exact. It started with a list in my brain of a few of my favorites (Lucy, Peri, Maisie...). Then I started taking notes on names I would hear or read in my People magazine as I knew the time was getting closer and closer to when we'd actually have a child to name.

I wanted to pick a name some time ago because calling her "baby China" just didn't seem right. Nathan felt strongly that we needed to wait until we saw her face and knew her story to give her a name. I had no choice but to honor his request. Looking back, he was right. We needed to know more to give her the proper name.

We sent in our LOI (letter of intent) for Zou Yu Tong. It's time to name this child of ours. Baby China doesn't cut it anymore. The kids wanted to know what we would name her, too. Yu means a drop of water that turns to vapor as it falls from the cloud, and Tong means red, which is also the color for luck in China. I researched names that mean Red. None of them grabbed me. I searched for names with Chinese roots (Maylie was one of my favorites). I wrote them down and presented Nathan with my list. He told me that he'd done some research of his own at work one day last week. This just made my day- how sweet that he was starting to think about naming our daughter, too. It's about time, right? God love my patient and thoughtful husband. He's taught me a lot about waiting things out and trusting His timing.

Nathan had also searched for names that mean red and his list included Ruby, Scarlett, and others that were just too far out there to be considered. Initially, I told him that the red names weren't doing much for me, but I REALLY liked this idea of incorporating her given name into our name for her, so I looked at her pic often and whispered the red names as I studied her gorgeous face. Scarlett just grabbed me and then every time I looked at her pic, that's all I could see. Our daughter, Scarlett. Mae has Chinese roots (Mei is how the Chinese would pronounce it), and so that will be one of her middle names along with her given first name, Yu.

So, we're excited to announce the name of our daughter. Scarlett Mae Yu Gronberg!