Why the Name Isabel Annett?

Just as we posted an explanation for why we named our first child Lukas David, I thought I would write why we chose Isabel Annett for our newest family addition.

Believe it or not, we actually had a harder time deciding on a name for our little girl than we did when we knew we were expecting a boy the first time around!  As with Lukas, the selection of names was limited to ones that were easily and similarly pronounced in both German and English.  I, just as before, preferred names that had significant meanings.

At first, we were looking at names that began with the letter "o" since we thought it would be nice to have our little girl's name begin with the same letter as her father's name--mainly since Lukas just so happened to share the same first letter as my name.  However, we simply couldn't agree on any of these names--although Olli certainly lobbied hard for the name of one of his colleagues, Olessya.

So, we read through every name in our baby book and made a "short list" of names that fit our criteria.  Isabel always came out on top.  The name comes from the name Elizabeth, which, in Hebrew, means "God's promise; God is my oath" or "pledged to God".  We recognize that Isabel is a gift from God and we certainly hope that she will grow up to believe and trust in the Lord and all of His promises.

Finding a middle name was a bit more difficult!  This is when Olli suggested the name Annett.  The name was on our list, but hadn't been a big part of our discussions.  However, once we had decided on Isabel as the first name, it was more appealing.  :-)  After Olli pointed it out, I realized it was very pretty and I liked the meaning too.  It comes from Hannah and means "grace of God; God's favor" in Hebrew.

So, over breakfast at IHOP, three and a half weeks before her birthday, we decided to name our second child Isabel Annett.  (We kept with the tradition of using the German spellings for the names just like we did with her brother.)