Almost 3 months before Dayla was born we announced her name.  With our little man it was more like 3 days.  Naming him was one of the most arduous tasks Daniel and I have taken on as a married couple.  Picking a name for a person, a name they will carry the rest of their life and will represent so much of who they are, is never an easy process.  We first found this out with Dayla, and then discovered naming a boy was EVEN HARDER.

Upon recent reflection, I realized it wasn’t fair that Dayla got a blog post about her name and our little man didn’t just because his parents had so much trouble deciding. So here we are with the announcement and background behind his name.

Sebastian Victor Sundin

What is in a Name?

Like his sister’s name, Sebastian’s name was one of the few names that met our naming criteria.  It was actually the first name we both agreed on, but for some reason Daniel and I were unsure if it was the one, so we continued our hunt for the perfect name for several more months. God knew that we had found the perfect name; he just waited for us to figure it out.

We searched high, we searched low.  We searched Swedish names, literary names, classic names, and unique (read: weird) names.  At the end of it all we narrowed our list down to some top picks and then asked Dayla which one she liked the best (trying to be clever so that we could get her opinion without having her leak the options out to the world).  ”Sebastian” she replied with conviction.  We did our best to sell her on other names (you should have seen our efforts), but she was set on that one.  ”Why do you keep saying other names?” she replied firmly to us, ” His name is Sebastian.” We sure do love our decisive 4 year old.

And so it came to be.

Sebastian is derived from the Greek word “sebastos” meaning “venerable” (venerable: accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character) and closely related to the Latin “Augustus” of the same meaning. (Fun fact: one of the other names at the top of our list was August.  I thought it was pretty cool that there were two names on our list that were really one in the same.)  We loved the way it sounded, we loved that it reminded us of Bastian from Never Ending Story, and we loved that St. Sebastian was a pretty cool guy.

Victor is not only Daniel’s middle name (Dayla got my middle name, Marie, so it was exciting for Daniel to pass on his too); it was also Daniel’s paternal Grandpa’s name: Milton Victor Sundin, aka “Grandpa Vic”.  Grandpa Vic was one of the kindest men and most gentle souls I have ever met.  I barely knew him to be honest, as by the time I started dating Daniel he already had the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, but when I sat at his funeral and heard the words spoken about him, I heard that what I had suspected was indeed true: he was one amazing, kind, gentle, and good man.  The strong silent type. The type of man I hope our Sebastian Victor will one day grow up to be.