The Name

I'm sure you're curious about her name.

Hopefully you've learned how to say it by now.  (beh-LEHN or buh-LEHN are acceptable.)  And if not, you are welcome to call her Bel.  (Or Belle?  Still debating how to spell it.  Should we keep the spelling foreign, since the full name is foreign?  Or should the spelling be shorter, as the whole point of nick names is simplicity?)

Well, Belen is Spanish.  It means Bethlehem.  There are a couple of people from church who have nicknamed her Beth.  Mark served an LDS mission in Argentina, where he knew a family with a little dark haired four-year-old named Belen.  She captured his heart apparently, and the name stuck with him.

When we were newly married and I still drilled Mark for conversation on a nightly basis, I asked him what we would name our future kids.  There was only one boy name we could agree on ... so Mac, if you have any  brothers .... you might just share the same name and get different nick names.  We moved on to girl names.  Mark then told me about this little Argentinian beauty, and the name stuck with me.  I doubted myself, however.  I had been told that my dad tried to get my mom to agree to his favorite mission name when they found out I was a girl, but the Fijian name didn't do much for her.  As a child I wished they had named me Aquosita, but now I am so grateful that my mom's common sense won out.  Would our daughter feel the same?

Fast forward four years ... here comes our little girl.  The debate is long and hard.  We still love Belen, but want to give some other names a try.  I love Elsa.  Mark loves Riley.  I like Sadie. Mark likes Josie.  The closer she came, the longer our list.  We still loved Belen, but worried that she would hate us for naming her something nobody could pronounce or remember; we would be dooming her to forever correct the world.  (Well the Caucasian portion at least ... so far most of the Californians have pronounced her name better than I do.)  Grandma couldn't say it.  Nana wanted her to have it.  Aunts and uncles and cousins were all divided.  Uncle Jake is currently serving an LDS mission in Spain, where he has met all sorts of Belens.  "And they're all hott.  So either name her Belen, or Trogdor," he advised.

And then there she was, in our arms.  Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin.  She looked like a Belen to me.  The morning after she was born, I called Mark from the hospital.  "They're wanting the birth certificate paperwork," I told him.  "Do we want Belen?"

"Do it," was his reply.  Simple as that.

Uh oh ... "What about a middle name?"  I asked.  Drat.  We knew we wanted it to be family name, so that limited our options a bit.  We quickly ticked through the list till one sounded right.  It didn't take long.

Belen Christine Gunn. 

Oh beautiful little girl ... we hope you like the name we've given you to be known by during your ride through this life.  We really did give it a lot of thought.  We love you.