- what's in a name? -

i've recently been asked the question, " how did you come up with your childrens names - was it a family name, something you just liked, since they're adopted you felt like keeping the name they were given...what was it?" - since the question was posed to me, i thought i'd explain a bit - for our children, we wanted to give them a name we'd chosen, but yet give them a bit 'more', so sit back & i'll tell you how we arrived at the names our children carry today

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dustin wayne shepler [meaning: valiant fighter/wagon maker] - dustin was a name i'd liked for many years - it wasn't being used a lot, so not everyone carried that name [which to me was a good thing] - i really wanted him named after my father [wayne], so that for him is about as complicated as it gets

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brittany nichole shepler [meaning: strong/victorious] - we adopted brit when she was a toddler & since we'd never adopted before, we really didn't know if we could/could not change her name - we felt at the time that since she knew her name, we'd let her keep it - we didn't know her middle name & spike was at the grocery & heard someone calling for brittany nichole & he loved it - he asked me about it & i really didn't care what it was, i just wanted her here & for me to be her mommy, so to me we could've called her 'frank' at that point - we later found out her middle name was already nichole! [sidenote: had we known then, what we know now, we'd for sure have named her something else as she hates it sooo much - she's more of a 'odd name' kind of girl & loves cool spellings, weird sounding names, etc. & to her 'brittany' is so boring]

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kiara jo-monéus shepler [meaning: feminine & dark/god's grace] - we'd picked kiara 'key air ah', just because we liked it - jo, after her gma joan & monéus 'moan a ease' was her haitian last name [sidenote: after naming her kiara, we ran across another kiara that spelled her name k'heira & i soooooooooooooo wish i'd have thought of that - this k'heira said her family's christians & wanted her to always see when writing her name that she was an heir of god, so they put it right in the middle of her name...how cool!]

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ruby annelize letant shepler [meaning: precious stone/gracious/consecrated to god] - we picked the name ruby after my g'ma & my mother who both have that as their first names - a middle name for ruby was harder for us to come up with - we chose annelize 'anna lease' as my middle name's ann, her great great g'ma's name was anne 'anna' & her birth mama's name's liz 'lease', so we ran it all together - we then added her haitian last name letant 'la taw'

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karleigh rei chérélus shepler [meaning: petite/song of joy] - we loved the name karleigh 'car lee' & once we found this spelling we were hooked for sure - we then found the name rei 'ray' & loved the meaning even more - chérélus 'share a loose' was her haitian last name

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ahniér mirlande desruisseaux shepler [meaning: grace/favor of god] - our son told us of the name ahniér 'on yeah' when he knew we were trying to think of neat names as he'd heard it before - mirlande 'meer lawn' was my sister madisyn's haitian name & we've always thought that it was beautiful & finally i'd a sister to name a daughter after!! - we were torn though on what the 3rd name would be as all our other haitian children have 4 names, but she'd no haitian last name, since she was born here in the states - we asked madisyn if she'd care letting ahniér use her last name desruisseaux 'dairy so' & she liked the idea [thanks madisyn!]

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now it's your turn, how'd you pick the names for your children??