What is in a name?

Things are continuing to progress with the adoption.  We are now in the waiting process with US Immigration.  Any day now we’ll be getting our I-800 Provisional Approval, then we can get going on our visa application, and after a few more forms and approvals, we’ll be on our way to China!

In the meantime, we’ve finalized our son’s new name!  When you adopt a child, you give them a new name.  At minimum, they get your family name, but you can also give them a new first and/or middle name.  Our son’s Chinese name is Wang Yi Nan.  Wang is the last name, Yi Nan is the first name.  We don’t know where this name came from.  In China, abandoning a child is illegal, so there is no indication of who the original family is.  So the local officials typically give the child a name.  Since Yi Nan is just under 18 months old now, he can probably recognize his name, but likely doesn’t have a strong attachment to it yet.  And growing up in the US, we feel it will be easier for him to have a common western first name.  But we also want to honor his Chinese heritage by keeping his Chinese name as a middle name.

So we are pleased to present: Samuel YiNan Weckesser

Samuel is from the Hebrew and can mean “God has heard” (see 1 Samuel 1:20 and note).  This name seemed particularly appropriate since we prayed for years for a second child, so this adoption shows that God heard and answered our prayers.  The Bible also talks about how God hears the cries of the orphan and all who are oppressed.  We know that Samuel YiNan was abandoned when he was just a few days old, and found near a factory entrance.  God heard the cries of this abandoned newborn and caused him to be rescued and brought to a safe place, where he was taken care of, treated for his medical disabilities, and eventually released for international adoption and matched to our family.  Even though this child’s life started in tragedy, the Lord turned this evil into good, and gave him a hope and a future.  We pray that we can be used by God to bring good into this child’s life.

Samuel was also the name of the great Old Testament prophet, who served God his whole life.  Despite growing up apart from his birth family, he trusted God and served Him faithfully.  God even spoke to him directly when he was just a boy and he listened to Him carefully.  We pray our son will learn to trust the Lord, and listen to Him well.

Samuel is also a family name: Gabriel’s maternal grandfather’s last name was Samuelson, and that grandfather’s grandfather’s first name was Samuel.  So as our Samuel is being grafted into the Weckesser-Samuelson-Jerdan-Hagen family tree, he bears the name of one of his adoptive ancestors.

We don’t know if Samuel YiNan’s Chinese name was given him for a particular reason, but it is made up of 2 Chinese characters.  Unlike most western names, which are separate words only used as names, Chinese names are taken from common vocabulary, so they have particular meanings in everyday language.  We were told that Yi means already or afterwards, and Nan is a Chinese Cedar, which is a special kind of tree whose wood is very precious.  We are keeping this combination name that was given him as a newborn, to honor his Chinese identity (and keeping the N capitalized to help westerners pronounce it as 2 separate syllables).

So as our Samuel YiNan grows up, we hope he finds meaning in the significance of both his first and middle names.  We're looking forward to bringing him home soon!