Joel and I are not big "surprise" people. I know there are many who believe in waiting until the baby is actually born to find out the gender or to announce the name. We just aren't like that. With our first, we just had to know the gender because we were having an awful time coming up with names. And actually, we didn't decide on Anders Eric until minutes after he was born. (Joel asked him if he wanted to be Anders or Eric).
This time was the same. Except there was no fighting over names. We had names for both genders picked out. And there will be no surprises (hopefully!) for us this time.
Anders will be getting a brother on or around July 5 and his name will be
Cade Joseph.
And here he is (profile shot)! You can see a blob right in the middle above his nose--that's his hand. Doesn't he look just like Anders? :)
How we picked
Cade is a great story.
Caedmon (pronounced CAD-(
rhymes with bad)-mun) is the earliest English poet (of Celtic decent) whose name is known. He lived in the 6
th century and began his life as a herder outside of a monastery in
northern England. He was unable to sing or write and avoided performing any type of music in front of his peers. One night he received a vision from God and was told to sing and then write down his song. In the morning when he woke up, he remembered the song and brought it to the head of the monastery. From there he became a monk and went on to write and sing. Not much else is known about him and only one of his text's still
survives--the song he received in his vision from God, called
Caedmon's Hymn. He is known as the Father of English poetry because he made religious poetry
accessible to ordinary people.
Here are the words to that Hymn (as translated from the original language):
- Now [we] must honour
- the guardian of heaven,
- the might of the architect,
- and his purpose,
- the work of the father of glory
- — as he, the eternal lord,
- established
- the beginning of wonders.
- He, the holy creator,
- first created heaven as a roof
- for the children of men.
- Then the guardian of mankind
- the eternal lord,
- the lord almighty
- afterwards appointed
- the middle earth,
- the lands, for men.
Cade is a derivative of Caedmon, and is a nod to Joel's love of poetry.
But what really made both of us fall in love with
Cade was when Joel came across this poem about Caedmon:
Caedmon
by Denise Levertov
All others talked as if
talk were a dance.
Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet
would break the gliding ring.
Early I learned to
hunch myself
close by the door:
then when the talk began
I’d wipe my
mouth and wend
unnoticed back to the barn
to be with the warm beasts,
dumb among body sounds
of the simple ones.
I’d see by a twist
of lit rush the motes
of gold moving
from shadow to shadow
slow in the wake
of deep untroubled sighs.
The cows
munched or stirred or were still. I
was at home and lonely,
both in good measure. Until
the sudden angel affrighted me—light effacing
my feeble beam,
a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:
but the cows as before
were calm, and nothing was burning,
nothing but I, as that hand of fire
touched my lips and scorched my tongue
and pulled my voice
into the ring of the dance.
Joseph is a special name to me personally--as I love the story of Joseph in Genesis. I also love that there are other wonderful men in the Bible named Joseph--I have a
particular fondness for Joseph of
Arimathea who donated his own tomb for Jesus.
But Joseph also has a special meaning for us as "Joe" was Joel's dad's middle name. A tribute to a man I never met, but a wonderful dad and husband nonetheless.
So now we will have 2 boys, with what I think are great names (I'm a bit biased), both paying tribute to their grandfathers--Anders for my dad, Andrew and Joseph for Joel's dad, Jimmy Joe.
As for the girl's name--we would have kept in the great Swedish tradition--Linnea and either gone with Marie (a family name on my side) or Elaine (Joel's mom's middle name)...
