Why We Named My Daughter "Claire"

When I was pregnant, I took the responsibility of naming my child seriously. Not only must she wear the name I give her for the rest of her life (from the playground to the professional world) but I also wanted it to have significance for her. I wanted it to not just sound good but also carry good meaning over her. It's a quality that we see frequently in the Bible; if a name's meaning isn't fitting for a person, God will intervene to alter it and re-name them.

And so, I sought out a name that would do both.

That wasn't as easy a task as I had expected, as I began researching and sorting through a variety of names.

Claire was a name that kind of came out of nowhere. My husband and I were on a family vacation, driving in the middle nowhere, back to the cabin we were staying in. We hadn't yet found out the sex of the baby but were still quite certain that we were going to have a baby boy. Still, I was sitting in the passenger seat when I said to him, "If it's a girl, what do you think of the names Claire or Heidi?" Heidi was rejected immediately, but Claire was a good contender.

Later, I looked up it's meaning: "Clear and Bright."

As my pregnancy progressed, we discovered that we were in fact having a girl, much to our surprise. And then I had my kidney incident. Once I'd recovered, I began processing my pregnancy and saw how so much of it had been covered in prayer; we'd prayed for months before actually getting pregnant, we prayed through the kidney incident for the baby to remain safe and for me to find healing.

I saw how this pregnancy had brought so much focus and glory to the Lord as he answered each request and remained front and center through it all. That meaning, "Clear and Bright," began to seem so fitting for this little girl who's very existence was becoming a shining example that pointed, clearly and brightly, to the God who made her.

Still, we weren't wholly convinced and waited until she was born to finally decide, with a couple of other contenders in our back pocket. But when we saw her, we agreed: She's a Claire. And even today, we still say the same. She's a Claire, with a personality that shines bright. And we pray that as she grows older, she will continue to live up to that meaning of her name, that she will embrace it as it was originally intended and that her life will point, always clearly, always brightly, to the One who made her.

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