A teacher (by trade) married to another teacher make a pretty good team… except when it comes to naming babies. Teachers see and hear it all when it comes to names. The classic, the trendy, the misspelled (on purpose?), and the downright made up. Most teachers I know have a pretty strong stance on how they feel about such names. Us included.
For various reasons, a lot of names just get thrown out… Not because they are bad names but maybe you've hollered that name one too many times on the playground or written it down for detention more times than you can count. i.e. Jonathan. A great name. But not one I could ever, ever, ever use.
When it was time to name Beckett Dane we each made a list and had complete veto power off the other's list. Beckett was the only name that remained. I had found it on a list of 'sports names' after all the names I suggested got kicked to the curb by R (Hudson, Swayer, Finn, etc were all first on the chopping block for him). B didn't end up having a middle name until he was about a day old. We had three left in the running when he was born before finally settling on Dane. (My middle name is Danielle after my great grandpa Daniel. R's grandpa and uncle's middle names are both Dale. My sister's is Kate after grandma Kathryn. So we added a curvy line to the Dale and said Dane was also short for Daniel. A stretch for a family name? Yes, definitely. Did we care? Not so much. Do we regret it? Not at all.)
Baby girl's name took a little more work.
We had a list of girl names that we've loved for nearly 10 years. (Yes, that's before we were even engaged… a teacher we worked with had a new granddaughter named Hadley and I wanted to steal the name for my list. That started the baby name conversation and we had all our future daughters named before we even talked about getting married. That's normal, right?) ;)
For various reasons over the years, each of those four girl names have gotten crossed off the list. (We still love all the names but just feel like some are off limits to us now… why is naming so hard?!) :)
So when we found out baby girl was in fact a girl… the name hunt began at square zero. As I started adding to the list, R started vetoing. Lindley, Avalyn, Murphy, Jentry & Arden were first on the chopping block. James (R's middle name) as a girl middle name was an absolute no for him (I'm still working on convincing him of it if we happen to have any other daughters down the line). So was Wren and Joy and any other cute name I could come up with. He agreed to Luciel (my grandma's middle name) but as soon as he did my niece got the middle name so we took it off the list too. He suggested some classic names which I loved but didn't feel fit well with Beckett. We literally had zero names to work with.
Eventually we prayed about it and asked that God would just tell us baby girl's name.
Not long after (the next day maybe?), I was scrolling through the inter webs and came across the name, Arley. Nope. Not loving it at all. But I had this feeling like the Holy Spirit was saying, "Hey, scroll back up, that's her name!" Ummm no. Then all of a sudden, this name I had never heard of before started showing up everywhere. Eventually, one of my favorite bloggers got a dog and named it Arley. That was all it took to convince me it was most definitely not a little girl's name. But the feeling persisted. Eventually I felt like I should just 'look it up.'
Before I tell you the meaning….. Let me tell you the short version of our summer. The Holy Spirit was working overtime in shaping me and the months leading up to this pregnancy, I was getting some major lessons on God's promises. Of course I've always heard people talk about God's promises and grew up singing (round style), "Standing on the Promises of God." It's a cute thought but I never claimed them as my own (or even really knew what those promises were for that matter). Eventually, God taught me what those promises were and urged me to claim them as my own. Namely, that ALL He has for me is good. Even when it hurts and is downright ugly, He is working behind the scenes to make it into something beautiful. It's ALL good.
Not long after, B started waking up every morning and finding rainbows in his room. The way the summer sun aligned with the front door glass, left a beautiful rainbow on his bedroom floor every morning. We started talking about rainbows and how they are a reminder that God keeps His promises. B was well versed in promises and those rainbows showed up every morning for several weeks straight.
….So when I typed in 'Arley baby name' you've probably guessed by now that the first search result said, "Hebrew name meaning: God's promise." Did you just get chills? I totally did. I prayed about it and knew it was her name. I loved it. Adorable and cute but strong and faith filled. I prayed R would feel the same way. I tossed and turned in bed but eventually fell asleep (did I mention this happened at 3 am?). I woke up early the next morning to a text from R (who was donating plasma already for the day) that said, "Her name is Arley."
Perfection.
...He actually said her name is Arley Grace but I couldn't come around to that one. Arley Wren. Arley Joy. Arley James. But not Arley Grace. (I kept thinking of the Griswolds around the Christmas table… GRACE?! She died 30 years ago!)
I liked Wren because it was a bird name. If we couldn't use Luciel after my grandma, I wanted to use a bird name as a nod to her. (She loved birds and for some reason, several of the quotes that keep coming to me about this little girl have to do with birds.)
I also wanted to use a family name but we couldn't agree on one we loved and felt bad using from one side of the family but not the other.
So back to the (middle) name game. I kind of planned that she would just get a middle name in the hospital like B did and that would be okay but we kept the conversation on the front burner anyway.
Fast forward to the Friday after Thanksgiving. We spent the day with his grandma. She was telling us stories about the old days and dropping all sorts of life lessons on us. Eventually the conversation rounded the corner into labor and delivery stories. She told us the reason behind why she was born at home… her older sister had died during birth in a hospital and her mom didn't want to go back. I wondered if her older sister hadn't died if she would even have ever been born. And then of course I would have never met R. And we would have never had Beckett. Or Avery. Or Arley. And if Avery hadn't gone to heaven so soon, we wouldn't likely have this little miracle growing here with us now.* And how much her mother must have longed for her during that time. God's hand was all over this story spanning the generations and His perfect plan was coming together.
*(Yep, that was the spiral of emotions I was on that day. We'll blame the pregnancy hormones.)
So here in God's perfect plan, she tells us her middle name. Evelyn.
Evelyn had been on the name list. It was my great-grandmother's middle name and I loved the way it sounded. But it wasn't getting much support from R.
We looked up the name meaning. "Evelyn means wished for child. beautiful bird. life."
It was everything I had been looking for in a middle name and then some… a bird meaning. A family name (on both sides). And the wished for child and life part? Seal the deal.
Arley Evelyn.
We hope you love your name beautiful girl. We think it fits you so.
