Zeke Jaden Jo Nation

We are so excited about the name God has given us for our son!  (We decided on July 14.)

Zeke means 'Strengthened by God.'  All throughout picking names we just kept saying how important it was to us that he has a strong name and this one is perfect!  Yes, he will spend the rest of his life being asked "Is that short of Ezekiel?"  but hopefully that is a cross he will be willing to bear!  (Is that the right form of the word 'bear' -- oh no -- can't decide!  Forgive me if its wrong- and feel free to leave a comment :)

Jaden means 'Jehovah has Heard.'  For very obvious reasons we love the meaning here.  And just because I can't say it enough and its never gets old I will repeat--Jehovah has heard the cry of our hearts and the prayers of MANY people and is giving us a son!  Praise Him!  We love the sound of this name and considered it as our first name.  We chose to put it in the middle mainly because we loved Zeke and also because we didn't want his first name to be gender neutral (that didn't seem very strong to us.)

Jo is our birth mom's middle name and she requested we have this somewhere in his name.  We are honored to include it and look forward to him having this name in common with her.  We also particularly wanted his middle initials to be JJ as they are our birth mom's first 2 initials also.

It has been an honor and quite a journey to pick...or rather discover...our son's name!

Just for fun...here are a few of our other names that put up quite a fight!

Abraham - father of nations (David particularly liked this one.) 

 Malachi - messenger of God  (One of Em's faves.)

Leo - lion of God

Jethro - abundance

Elliott - The Lord is my God

Josiah - Jehovah has healed

Tobias - God is good

To celebrate, we made Zeke a cake :)
(Not sure why I can't figure out how to flip the picture...but you get the idea.)

One of the resources we read said to "try the name out" in various ways so here it goes...

Zeke Nation

Zeke J J Nation

Zeke J Nation

ZJJN

ZJN

David, Emma & Zeke Nation

Sounds good, right ?  We think so.

Our birth mom loves calling him by name, as does her family and friends.  This is such an added blessing to have her love the name as much as we do!