Orion Daniel: His Name

The story behind Orions name is honestly kind of funny to me.

I had always dreamed/planned to name my first daughter Tera, after the village in Niger where I grew up. I had also always loved the name Hezekiah and planned to use it for my first son. Thankfully when I met Theo he also loved both of those names and we had the names picked out for our first daughter and first son before we even got married. Those two were so easy to name, and I felt like their names had huge significance to us. When we found out we were pregnant with a second boy, it took a little longer to pick a name. We narrowed it down to three names and throughout the pregnancy we finally settled on Ezra. It felt like it had strong biblical meaning and we really liked it. We felt like all our kids had somewhat unique names (although I’ve now noticed that Ezra is getting pretty trendy!), and they all had either personal significance or biblical significance.

Shortly after Ezra was born, I got a necklace with my kids initials on it. The necklace said “THE” and when my husband Theo looked at it, he said (jokingly) “If we ever have another kid, we will have to name them something that starts with an O, so that our kids initials spell out THEO!” We laughed, because that would be pretty funny.

And then there we were…pregnant with #4. And we decided we would actually go with an O name in order to spell out THEO (Tera Hezekiah Ezra Orion). Now, O names are not very common and it really narrowed our list down. Finding out it was a boy narrowed our list down even further…to like five names total. We searched the Bible for all the boy O names, and didn’t love any of them. We liked a few, but not enough to stick the name on our child for the rest of his life. But the one name that really stuck out to both of us, that we both loved was Orion.

I was worried that people would judge us for picking something Greek mythology or new age-y (stars/constellations), because we are *not* all about that. We just truly loved the name. Theo loves all things space/stars/planets/constellations, so that was also a fun part of picking this name. I also loved reading through some psalms and other Scripture passages that talk about the stars in the sky and the significance of God creating such majestic galaxies that bow down and worship Him. I hope and pray our son will be like the stars in Psalm 148:3-6

Praise Him, sun and moon;
Praise Him, all stars of light!
Praise Him, highest heavens,
And the waters that are above the heavens!
Let them praise the name of the Lord,
For He commanded and they were created.

Orion means “rising in the sky” and “mighty hunter”. Our prayer for Orion is that he grows up to be a strong leader and a mighty warrior for the truth and that he will be unashamed to stand out and stand up for what is true and right according to God’s Word.

And it’s super fun to be able to spot his constellation in the night sky! And anytime we see anything that has stars/constellations on it, we think of our sweet Orion!

How to Pronounce it: O-rye-un

His middle name is Daniel, and this is after my brother Daniel. My brother Daniel is also named after my Uncle Dan who died of malaria when he was four years old (my Grandparents were missionaries in West Africa at the time). My brother is a wonderful, hilarious, caring and faithful man and one we would be proud to have Orion take after.

So, the long story is that we did think carefully before picking out his name, but the short story is also that we decided we wanted to pick an O name, and we just really liked this one. First time Mom me would have been so shocked that we picked a name “because we liked it”, but here I am fourth time Mom me and so so happy that we can relax a bit and have some fun and pick a name just because we really like it!