If you haven’t followed the baby name drama in the Badzin household, I’ll get you up to speed.
When I was six months pregnant with our fourth child, I spent a few days determined to change our 2-year-old daughter’s name (after I’d pushed the name on Bryan in the first place). I terrorized the family, then settled on leaving her name as is. After all that, Bryan declared he would name our fourth child. Since I’d lost faith in my naming abilities anyway, I agreed to the plan.
Then towards the end of the pregnancy, Bryan said he wanted to follow the more traditional Jewish custom of not announcing the baby’s name until the bris (for a boy) or baby naming ceremony (for a girl). I wasn’t sold on the idea until I did a little research, which led to my writing a piece on the matter for TcJewfolk.com.
Now that our son has been in our lives for a week known only as “the baby” or “mister” or “pumpkin breath,” I can say that waiting to announce his name added meaning and depth to the bris for everyone in attendance. I recommend trying it if you have the chance. If I could go back and make the same decision with our other kids, I would.
Our “dream team” of rabbis from our Conservative synaogue and Chabad
So, now that the wait is over, I’m excited to share our baby’s name. His English name is Nathan (we’ll call him Nate) Sackheim Badzin. And his Hebrew name is Natan David (pronounced Daveed). Bryan and I are drawn to names from our Jewish heritage. Bryan spoke at the bris about the attributes of the prophet Natan and King David that we hope our son will share one day.
Sackheim is my maiden name, and since I have no brothers or male first cousins who will carry the name forward, we thought it would be meaningful for my parents and my family to know that Nate will connect to that piece of his family puzzle.
So, patient friends and blog readers, I appreciate you coming along on this baby naming ride with me and enduring all the baby talk in general. Soon it will be time to get serious about “the writing life” aspect of this blog again. First order of business—SLEEP.
Wish me luck!
Nina (@NinaBadzin)
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Welcome! I am a freelance writer living in Minneapolis with my husband and four children. My essays on parenting, social media etiquette, improving my habits, Jewish life and more appear in the Huffington Post, Kveller.com, The Jewish Daily Forward and elsewhere. I'm glad you found your way here!
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That’s a beautiful story, Nina! In some ways, I found it harder to name my second daughter, as I wanted her name to be something deeply meaningful (like the name you chose for Nathan). In other ways, it was easy, as I had one name (her middle name) that I’d been holding onto for over a year as having special significance for me if I ever had another daughter.
[...] will run out eventually. Also, I still have ten pounds to lose thanks to almost-two-month-old baby Nate. And aside from fitting into my old clothes, I worry about my health, my memory, and my energy [...]
I love that name!
Congratulations. I like the idea of including the maidenname into the kids name, although I don’t really think it’d work well with my name – too long. Then again, I do have 3 brothers to carry on the name… 
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