Yesterday our granddaughters were at our house making Christmas gifts for their parents and baking a few holiday treats with their grandmother. At one point their brother, who was also sharing in some of the activities, was surprised to realize that today is Christmas Eve. He somehow had gotten the days mixed up in his mind, thinking that there was one more day before Christmas. That got our family group talking about Eve. Our oldest granddaughter shares our daughter’s middle name, Eve. I said something about having a holiday that shares your name and asked her if she knew the meaning of the name.

She was quick to respond with a dictionary definition of the word eve: “I know what it means. I looked it up on the computer. Eve is the day before an event or occasion.” She was correct as far as she got. I told her that she was right that her name referred to the day before something important. But it has another meaning as well. If she had done an Internet search for “the name Eve” instead of just “Eve,” she would have found out that Eve is a Hebrew name that means “to breathe” or “to live.” It can also mean “mother of life,” or “full of life.”

We chose the name Eve for our daughter with care, even though we didn’t know her when we chose it. As our lives turned out, we were on the adoption list for a “special needs’ child. That meant that it was likely that the child we would be offered to adopt would already have been named. However, the agency called us and asked us to consider adopting an infant. They told us that she was a girl and asked if we could pick her up before noon the next day. They also told us that we would be the ones to make her official name designation. We hadn’t expected that part. So we decided to use the name that we would have used had her brother been a girl, “Rachel Eve.” It turned out to be a very good name for her.

The choice of our children’s names was heavily influenced by our experience in theological seminary. Both have Hebrew names, influenced by my studies in the Hebrew Scriptures. Our son’s middle name is the first name of a beloved professor. The choice of the name Eve as a middle name was a bit of a break from family tradition because my mother’s family had spelled the name “Eva.” Eva was the name of my maternal grandmother. However, we had intentionally chosen the most common spellings of our children’s names. We decided that having a name that came from another language might present challenges in pronunciation and spelling if we chose alternate spellings. And with Hebrew names there are a lot of alternate spellings that arise in part from the fact that Hebrew uses a different alphabet than English. Eve can be spelled, Eve, Eva, Ewa, Chavah, and several different ways in English. Alternate spellings also are applied to her first name, Rachel, which is also rendered Rachael, Raquel, Rachel, Rachele, Rachelle, Rahel, and Rahela. And if you want a longer conversation about how names are spelled, you should ask her brother how many different ways baristas spell his name, Isaac.

There is a slight play on words with the name we chose for our daughter. The name Rachel means “lamb of God,” and it is often given the meaning “Ewe,” the term for a female lamb.

I have found the multiple possible meanings of names to be part of the joy of knowing other people. I have even grown to appreciate the challenge that some people have with spelling our children’s names. My son knows he delights me by sending me photographs of the misspellings of his name. I once advised him that when a barista asked him for his name for an order he should give that person the name from their name tag. When they ask, “Really?” he could respond, “No, but I know you know how to spell that name.”

I am delighted to have a daughter and a granddaughter with middle names that have multiple meanings. I love the concept of a name that is the breath of life. In the creation story of the second chapter of Genesis, it is reported that God formed Adam out of dust from the ground and blew the breath of life (Eve) into his nostrils, and Adam became a living being. Later in the same story, God causes Adam to go to sleep and as Adam slept, God took one side from the man and made a partner for Adam. That partner was named Eve.

I could preach multiple sermons on this particular piece of Biblical history, and I have. One aspect of the stories of this part of our Bible is that they were not originally told as science. They were told as stories of the relationship between Creator and created. They were told to explain connections that defy language for expression. They have been treasured by our people for millennia and come from a particular part of our history. Knowing the history of the origins of the story can yield a deeper understanding.

On this day that we call Eve, there is always a delight for me in knowing that there are multiple people in my family’s story that share the name. My grandmother Eva, who died before I was born is a direct source of the genetics that make me. She is also one of the people whose love sparked the love of my mother which has been an enduring gift for my life. And now I have a daughter and a granddaughter who share the name Eve. They both are part of the process of bringing forth new life and carrying the love of previous generations forward into new generations.

Eve is always a joyful day for me. I approach today with joy and expectation. There is more Eve - more life - yet to come.