What Will Her Name Be?

Many people have asked us what we'll name Xiao Qian when she's a member of the Kruggel family. Truth is, we don't know. We love all of our children's names, and worked hard to find ones that we enjoyed and thought they'd enjoy too. As is quite evident, we have a theme going with our new adoptive children, Poppy and Willow. Two syllables, plant life, colorful, cheery and peaceful (although some don't think of Willow trees as cheery, but do think of them as peaceful), easy to pronounce and remember, etc... We have some thoughts about what we want to name Xiao Qian, but as with most names they engender strong reactions from various members of our family, some very positive and some not quite so positive. In fact, some of those family reactions are quite visceral.

We just found out that her English "given" name in China is Alysee. I don't know that she ever really uses that or is even very attached to it. When we first found her on the listing for adoptees, her name given by the agency was Lana (some may remember seeing that). She may be the most re-named girl on the face of the planet.

Victoria and I decided that we're going to hold off giving her a name until we meet her. We have several that we like (and will keep to ourselves for now), but want to communicate with her as best we can upon first acquaintance to see what she thinks, wants and feels. We love the fact that her given Chinese name means "beautiful", and from everything that we can see and know thus far, she sure is. At a minimum we'll probably end up keeping Xiao Qian as a middle name, like we've similarly done for Poppy and Willow.

So for now we'll just sit in suspense and wait upon that moment when we meet her to determine what we'll call her for the rest of her life. Just writing about this makes me (us) excited.

Waiting Upon the Lord,

Tom (& Victoria)

(P. S. - The picture of Xiao Qian above is the very first picture we ever saw of her. She likes the peace sign.)