I've never heard that name before....Neither had we!

We always knew when we had a son, his name would be Bruce. When we went to the hospital to have Aleah, we walked in with two names on a list, knowing Marie would be the middle name, and walked out with a completely different name than any we had ever considered. It just so happened that our second child was a boy. So we had A & B (Aleah & Bruce). We always joked about using a 'c' name if we decided to have a third child. In the 3.5 years before getting pregnant a third time, we had decided on a 'c' name for a boy. Once we found out we were having a girl, we were back to square one. We couldn't agree for anything. Not to mention, since we didn't use any names on our list for Aleah, Scott was hesitant to even talk about names if I was going to continue to look for more names and change my mind time and again... :)

In November, we had friends who had a baby girl and named her Shiloh. I loved it, and started thinking about a Biblical place that we could use that started with a 'c'. The first one that came to mind was Canaan. I loved it. It was the promised land that God promised to the Israelites and He also brought the Israelites out of captivity into the promised land. I just loved that my child's name would have such a great story and history. Alas.....it just sounded too masculine. No matter how I spelled it, I couldn't get past the masculine sound.

My friend, Karla, is the one who suggested Cana, the place where Jesus performed his first miracle. The day she suggested it, we were trying to find it in the Bible. I'm the one who said that I knew it was in the first three Gospels. It couldn't be in the book of John. Ha ha ha.....a couple of great Bible scholars we are. John is the only book that records the story of turning the water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana. That was where the idea was born. We added the 'y' (Cayna) because I wanted to make sure it was pronounce 'right'. The 'h' was added because Aleah ends in 'ah' and I wanted a child named with a 6-letter name like mine, since the other two have 5-letter names like Scott's. I know, a wonderful way to find a spelling. :)

At separate times, both Karla and Scott suggested Grace as the middle name. I never saw myself as having a daughter with the name Grace in her name. So I never committed to it. I finally thought that I should see if there is a meaning for her name. I actually found the name in my baby name book. 'Kana' is a masculine, Japanese name that means 'powerful'. Knowing that, I thought again about using Grace as the middle name, and I loved it. I know Who has a Powerful Grace and I wanted my daughter to be 'labeled' with our Lord.

Caynah Grace = a Powerful Grace

Our children...A, B, & C! :)