Ezra, Ezra, read all about it

For a while now I've been pondering writing a post about how we decided on the name Ezra for our sweet baby boy. When I tell people our son's name, I get a few different reactions: they love it, they pretend to love it ("That's...different."), or they have never heard of it and I have to repeat it a couple times. It really surprises me every time someone has not heard the name Ezra. When we were contemplating the name, I thought, "It's easy to pronounce, it's a biblical name, and everyone has heard it." Not so. The first time we went out to eat with Ezra, our waitress asked his name (along with touching his face and hands--ACK!) and when we told her, she said, "Oh. That's new. But just wait, people will hear it and then they'll like it and start to use it." Like we had started a trend with our kid's made-up name. It cracks me up that in this day and age of so many made-up names, we chose one that is literally one of the oldest names still in use today, and people think it's made-up.

So before Ezra was born, I had a pretty long list of boys' names, maybe 20 or 30. I went through my Baby Name Wizard book, wrote down every one I liked, with the ones I had loved for a long time asterisked. Oddly, I was just sure we would have a girl though, because of our family's lopsided number of girls (on both sides) and the fact that we had a girl's name picked out from the get-go. But alas, we found out we were having a boy. So back to square one, which included me marking names off my own list that I liked enough for a hypothetical baby, but not for MY baby. My two favorites for boys' names for a long time have been Ezra and Asher. Chad was given full reign to nix whatever names he didn't like, which I found easier than asking him to come up with his own list as well. Chad immediately nixed Asher, claiming it sounded pretentious, which cracks me up. However, I wanted to avoid a name that I thought was going to become really popular soon, and I see Asher doing that, so I was fine with taking it off the list. Also on the list was Jonah, which I still love (it came down to these two names at the end). People often ask us if we had to have a biblical name. Absolutely not. I loved a lot of other names, but in the end it just happened to come down to names from the Bible (Asher is certainly not a name I would choose for its biblical significance, I just liked the name). So the night before we went to the hospital, we sat down and talked about each of the names and their significance. Ultimately we chose Ezra because of its Hebrew meaning, "Servant of God," and the story behind the Ezra in the Bible. The name Ezra is also a nod to a couple of well-known authors, Ezra Jack Keats and Ezra Pound (significant to me because of my English background). And contrary to what some of my high school/college friends might think, no, we did not name him after the band. Finally, we just liked its quirky sound, what I like to call "zippy." A few people (family members maybe? Let's not point fingers) have said it sounds like an old man's name. That is also fine, because he will be a man before we know it, but let's not talk about that now or I might cry.

Finally, about two months before Ezra was born, I consulted the social security name website. Going back to my desire to not name my child something that every other kid was named, I looked at the rankings and more importantly the number of spots the name jumped over the last year. Ezra jumped about 40 spots, but was still ranked below Jonah, which jumped about 30 spots. So I figured the chances of my kid having the same name as a bunch of other kids is slim to none. Plus, I realize the name Ezra probably doesn't appeal to as many people as the name Jonah. I know, I'm OCD.

So there you have it. And please don't call him Ezzie.

**ETA: Ezra's middle name is Paul. We chose the name for two reasons: Chad's dad's name is Paul, and Ezra is the first male grandson on Chad's side, so we thought that would be special. Also, the biblical Paul is the ultimate reminder of God's grace and forgiveness, which I always enjoy being reminded of.