"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
~William Shakespeare
Avery Fisher
Avery’s name was easy to pick out. My husband’s favorite name for a boy was
Avery, and I loved the name when he suggested it. According to babycenter, Avery means “leader
of the elves”. It has a unique (pretty
silly) meaning, so that made the name even better!
His middle name, Fisher, was not originally
going to be his middle name. Up until I
was 26 weeks pregnant with him, he was Avery James. We were going to save the name Fisher for our
second child, should it have been a boy.
But we decided to go ahead and use it just in case we didn’t have a
second boy (good decision!). That is how
he became Avery Fisher!
Selah Lynn
So many people have asked where we came up with the name
Selah. When I was in high school, one of
my best friend’s sisters named her baby Selah, which was also the name of my
favorite Christian band at the time. I
absolutely fell in love with the name!
The band, Selah, pronounces their name “Say-la” and there is an explanation for
why on their website.
Selah is Hebrew and is actually pronounced “See-la”(but in
my opinion, that is not as pretty). It
is a word found in the book of Psalms. One
of my favorite verses using Selah:
“You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble
and surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah”
–Psalm 32:7 NIV
Popular meanings for it that I have found are “pause and
reflect on what was just sung”, “amen”, and “to lift the voices in praise”, all
of which I like!
When we found out Selah was a girl, we were beginning to
second guess our girl name decision. We
knew people would always be mispronouncing and misspelling it. So we agreed to go with another favorite,
Chloe. I tried so hard to call her
Chloe. I even went so far as to paint decorative
letters and hang them on her wall.
But, I kept accidentally calling her Selah. I kept this to myself, because Sam seemed
really excited about the name Chloe.
Then one day, out of nowhere, he tells me he doesn’t want to name her
Chloe anymore. I was really relieved,
because it never sat right with me. It
is a beautiful name, just wasn’t right for our baby girl. So, at 35 weeks pregnant, we switched her
name back to Selah, though we weren’t positive we wanted to spell it that
way. We spent the next 4 weeks deciding
between “Selah” and “Sayla”. I asked others for their opinions, I spelled the name out on
paper, I searched the internet, and still kept flipping back and forth between
the two. I really wanted the original spelling;
however, “Sayla” is phonetically correct.
People would say it right and most likely spell it correctly. But in the end, I just could not bring myself
to spell it any other way than Selah. I
have had that name picked out for about 10 years.
We actually didn’t make it “official” until she was born. There was absolutely no doubt once she was
born, that she was our little Selah Lynn.
As for her middle name, Lynn, it is my mother’s middle
name! I have my maternal grandmother’s
middle name, and now Selah has her maternal grandmother’s middle name!
Oh, and funny little side note: one of our other favorite names was
Olivia. According to www.babynames.com that
name means “elf army”. That would have
gone well with “leader of the elves” (Avery), don’t you think? =)
