The Naming of Jesse

Picking a name for a child is a difficult task. A person's name is frequently one of the first things that people learn when they meet someone new. It is difficult to change your name. And you have to pick the name before you know anything about your new child.

Mira and I have our own constraints on what names we want. Mira, who had her name mispronounced and misspelled throughout her entire life, wants names that are easy to spell and pronounce. I want names that sound nice (which seems to mean no hard stops, based on the names I like and don't like). We are also following Mira's family's tradition of naming in memory of dead relatives that were important to us (and by naming in memory of them, I mean the first letter has to be the same). Since we are raising our children as Jews, I want them to have Irish middle names in recognition of that part of their heritage (this somewhat conflicts with Mira's requirement that the names be easy to spell and pronounce). And Mira has a rule that we can't use names of any of our exes (which mostly just eliminates one of my favorite names, which is of course Irish, easy to spell, and easy to pronounce).

Operating under those constraints, we chose the name Jesse Liam for our son. Then we chose the Hebrew name Yaakov Lev. Jesse is a biblical name (the father of king David) which means gift. Liam is derived from Wilhelm and roughly means helmet. Yaakov, also a biblical name, has a complex meaning because of the story in which it appears. It means protection according to some sources and basically usurper according to others ("one who grasps"). Lev is the hebrew word for heart. So translating his name into concepts produces "gift of protection, helmet of the heart."

Jesse is for our maternal grandfathers, Jesse and John, Mira's great-uncle Jake, and Mira's great-great-aunt Jeannette. Liam is for my grandmother Love and my great-uncle Liam.