His Name

In this post I explained why we chose the name Anna Clare.

So how did we come up with Anthony Xavier? 

Well, if you've been reading my blog for a while, you may have seem my post about what we would have named baby S had his birthmom placed him with us.  His name would have been Anthony Francis.  However, she did not name him that.  And we were careful never to call him that due to some tension with the birthmom and the name we had chosen.

So fast forward.  We knew we wanted our first son to be named Anthony.  We love the name for many reasons.  First of all, St. Anthony is a very awesome saint.  We heard a lot about him when we were in Assisi as he was very close with St. Francis.  But in addition to that, we have a priest friend who has been very influential in our faith journey.  His name is Antonio.  He was our priest at the Newman Center when we were in college.  Although Jeremy and I were always faithful Catholics, we weren't super involved in our faith until he became chaplain there.  He's a very holy priest, who is very devoted to the Eucharist.  He is a fantastic homilist and always challenged us in our faith.  We always wanted to name our kids after holy men and women.  Anthony seemed fitting.

When we met with Anthony's birthmom for the first time, we talked about names.  She shared the name she liked first.  She had picked out the name Xavier.  She just liked the way it sounded and she liked that it was a little bit unique.  Both Jeremy and I immediately loved it.  Not only was it unique, but it was also a saint name which was important to us.  J loved the name Anthony and we decided that as much as we all liked Xavier, Anthony was a more fitting first name.

Now, we've already been asked if all of our kids will start with A.  And my answer is no.  We have nothing special with the letter A.  We just really loved the names we chose.  We had another girls name picked out (if this baby had been a girl) and it doesn't begin with A.  Hopefully we have a girl next because we cannot agree on another boy's name!  :-) 

I have already asked myself why in the world we picked two names that sound so similar.  I've already called them the wrong name many times.  And then I reminded myself that in the end, through prayer and careful consideration, we had chosen these names for a very special reason.  And my sisters and I all have names that sound VERY different from one another and we got called each other's names all the time.  That just comes with having more than one child. 

So there it is.  Anthony Xavier.  He's got some pretty sweet namesakes to live up to :-)