JJ Isaiah Sullivan
Okay, I’ll admit it, we gave JJ his short and wonderful name because, well, we thought it sounded sporty! You can already picture it can’t you? The announcer says, “And now, at 6 foot 2, shooting guard out of Huxley, Iowa, J (ayyyyy) J (ayyyyyy) SUUUUUULIVAN!” I am cheering in my seat already! Also, at the time that I was pregnant with JJ one of Jake’s girls’ teams had a slumber party, and they decided that night that they were going to come up with what we should name our baby. The name they decided? JJ. And they had no idea that we also were thinking that name because we hadn’t told anyone yet. A little known fact is that the two J’s actually do not stand for Jake jr. In fact, originally they didn’t stand for anything, hence why there are no dots in between the J’s. But, then, e v e r y o n e wanted to know what JJ ‘stood for’, so I started saying that it stood for Jake & Janel. That answer seemed to work, so we stuck with it! JJ’s middle name, Isaiah, means ‘salvation of God; the Lord helps me’. We gave him this middle name because of its biblical meaning.
Jayla Joy Sullivan
About halfway through my pregnancy with Jayla we had decided that her name would be Bella (I even wrote this to her in my pregnancy journal and told her that this would be her name)! I had always loved that name, and I couldn’t get over it. Then, one night Jake came to me and said that every time he thought of the name Bella he could only picture his brother’s pet bulldog whose tongue hung out of its mouth (b/c the dog’s name was Bella). Around this time I had also started feeling really guilty that we were not planning on giving her a ‘J’ name since the rest of us were J’s….I didn’t want her to feel left out. The problem was that all of the ‘J’ girl names I liked, Jake didn’t like, or he already knew someone with that name. So, a few weeks later I was sitting around trying to think up a ‘J’ name that sounded like Bella. Somehow I got to Jayla in my mind…I kept it as an option and mentioned it to Jake one night. He absolutely LOVED it. Seeing his reaction made me love it more, and then it just kept growing on me….now I couldn’t picture her with any other name…even Bella. When I thought of this name that one night I tried to look up the meaning, but I could not find it anywhere! Everything just said ‘new invented name’ or ‘no meaning’ or it took me to other names similar to it. I just looked it up again today, and found two meanings: ‘happy’ and ‘jaybird’. We’ll stick with happy. Her middle name came because it just sounded perfect with her first name…and everyone I know that has ‘joy’ as part of their name seems radiantly, well, joyful. Here is a cool definition that I found one day about joy:
Joy…
-is not the same as happiness
-is independent of situations and things
-is a gift from God
-increases when you trust God and do what He wants you to do
-is visible to others
Okay, I’ll admit it, we gave JJ his short and wonderful name because, well, we thought it sounded sporty! You can already picture it can’t you? The announcer says, “And now, at 6 foot 2, shooting guard out of Huxley, Iowa, J (ayyyyy) J (ayyyyyy) SUUUUUULIVAN!” I am cheering in my seat already! Also, at the time that I was pregnant with JJ one of Jake’s girls’ teams had a slumber party, and they decided that night that they were going to come up with what we should name our baby. The name they decided? JJ. And they had no idea that we also were thinking that name because we hadn’t told anyone yet. A little known fact is that the two J’s actually do not stand for Jake jr. In fact, originally they didn’t stand for anything, hence why there are no dots in between the J’s. But, then, e v e r y o n e wanted to know what JJ ‘stood for’, so I started saying that it stood for Jake & Janel. That answer seemed to work, so we stuck with it! JJ’s middle name, Isaiah, means ‘salvation of God; the Lord helps me’. We gave him this middle name because of its biblical meaning.
Jayla Joy SullivanAbout halfway through my pregnancy with Jayla we had decided that her name would be Bella (I even wrote this to her in my pregnancy journal and told her that this would be her name)! I had always loved that name, and I couldn’t get over it. Then, one night Jake came to me and said that every time he thought of the name Bella he could only picture his brother’s pet bulldog whose tongue hung out of its mouth (b/c the dog’s name was Bella). Around this time I had also started feeling really guilty that we were not planning on giving her a ‘J’ name since the rest of us were J’s….I didn’t want her to feel left out. The problem was that all of the ‘J’ girl names I liked, Jake didn’t like, or he already knew someone with that name. So, a few weeks later I was sitting around trying to think up a ‘J’ name that sounded like Bella. Somehow I got to Jayla in my mind…I kept it as an option and mentioned it to Jake one night. He absolutely LOVED it. Seeing his reaction made me love it more, and then it just kept growing on me….now I couldn’t picture her with any other name…even Bella. When I thought of this name that one night I tried to look up the meaning, but I could not find it anywhere! Everything just said ‘new invented name’ or ‘no meaning’ or it took me to other names similar to it. I just looked it up again today, and found two meanings: ‘happy’ and ‘jaybird’. We’ll stick with happy. Her middle name came because it just sounded perfect with her first name…and everyone I know that has ‘joy’ as part of their name seems radiantly, well, joyful. Here is a cool definition that I found one day about joy:
Joy…
-is not the same as happiness
-is independent of situations and things
-is a gift from God
-increases when you trust God and do what He wants you to do
-is visible to others
Names have a lot of significance.
1 comment:
I wanted to name Elly "Bella," too! Guess why Caleb didn't like that name...his sister's dog!!!!!! Oh how funny. Your babies are precious, love the pics.
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