Saturday, June 28, 2008

Zeke's naming




A tradition in our family is to have a baby naming ceremony with our family and friends in St. Louis. Although it took us 6 months to get here, with 50+ people gathered to celebrate, we held the naming at my parents' house last Sunday. We were all sad that Tom couldn't be with us. He is working hard back in Beijing, but it was so nice to have many loved ones around us and Tom was in there in our hearts. Everyone asked of him and hopefully he will be able to make a visit next month.

Zeke was given his Hebrew name and I explained the meanings of all of his names: English, Hebrew and Chinese. You can see the cake had all three!

We gave him the name Judah Ezekiel "Zeke". Judah is the name of the hero of the Hanukkah story, a strong soldier. We thought this was fitting because he was born at the time of Hanukkah and also his father is a strong soldier. Also, Judah was the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, as he is our fourth son. Ezekiel means the strength of G-d. Zeke's Hebrew name is Zev. Zev means wolf in Hebrew. We gave him this name to honor my Uncle Willard, of Blessed Memory. His Chinese name is Hai De Shuai. Hai De is our family name and Shuai means handsome but it also is a name used to describe Zhu De, a famous Chinese leader during the cultural revolution. Judah sounds like Zhu De, so our Chinese friends and colleagues always think we named him the Chinese version. Xing Ayi came up with the Chinese name and we love it.

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