Three Websites, Three Different Meanings

The first one said it means light.

The second one said it means a kind of bird. The third one said it comes from a place name and does not mean anything much at all, and then, in a different paragraph on the same page, said something about strength.

That was fourteen days ago.

Since then there have been forums. There has been a page about the language it came out of. There has been a comment thread from 2011 where two people who both seemed to know things disagreed completely and neither of them came back.

And the name has been sitting in a kind of holding pattern the entire time, because it cannot be loved until it is known, and it cannot be known because nobody agrees.

I want to name what this has turned into, because it started as diligence and it is not that any more.

It started as a good instinct: know what you are handing over. That is right, and this site says so plainly in its own instructions.

But somewhere around day five it changed. It stopped being research and became a search for a ruling. Somebody, somewhere, has to be the authority. There has to be a final page that settles it, and then the loving can start.

And there is no such page, and there was never going to be one, and two weeks have gone into looking for a thing that does not exist.

And ye shall know the truth

There is a promise in John's gospel that has been carried into some very strange rooms, and it is worth reading it for what it actually offers.

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32, King James Version)

You are promised a truth that sets somebody free, and John 8:32 has never once promised a settled entry in a reference book. The Holy Spirit is the one who does that freeing, which the same gospel says a few chapters later, and the written word says the truth and then says free.

Read what the truth in that verse is doing. It makes free. That is its work. Whatever is being called truth in a person's life, if it is producing two weeks of increasing bondage to a search box, it is not the truth that verse is talking about.

And read what Jesus is speaking about in the whole passage. He is speaking about Himself, and about knowing God, and about a freedom in a person. He is not offering a settlement to every open question in the world, and He never once suggested that a person had to have all their questions closed before they could be free.

You have been treating an unsettled question as a cage, and Scripture puts freedom and truth together without requiring every answer first. John 8 offers a freeing kind of knowing, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies it.

What is actually knowable here

Now let me be practical, because there is a real answer to the question and it is not the one being hunted.

Here is what is knowable about most name meanings: very little, with confidence.

Names travel. They pass through languages and get reshaped. A word that was a place becomes a family name, becomes a first name, gets attached to a saint, gets a folk etymology invented for it in the eighteen hundreds because the real one was dull, and that folk etymology is the one that ends up on the popular sites because it is the pretty one.

Three sources disagreeing is not a problem with the sources. It is an accurate report of the state of the knowledge. The disagreement is the answer.

You have the answer already, and no verse anywhere required a person to close a question before they could act. John 8:32 sets truth and freedom together, and the Holy Spirit is what allows somebody to accept an honest uncertainty instead of hunting a false certainty.

And there is something freeing in that, once it lands, which is worth spelling out.

If the meaning is genuinely uncertain, then no meaning has authority over this name. Not the bird, not the light, not the place. Which means the fear that started all of this, that the wrong meaning might be the true one and might attach itself to a child, has nothing to stand on.

You are free from all three of them at once, and Scripture never once made a dictionary the authority on a person. The Spirit of God is the one who does the work a search box was never going to do, and John 8 hands the freeing to the truth about God.

What to do with three answers

So here is what to do, and it is not a fourth website.

Pick the one you like. Say that plainly, without embarrassment. Choose the meaning that is lovely, and know it is a choice, and tell your daughter the truth when she is old enough to ask: there were three, and this is the one we liked.

That is not dishonest. It is more honest than pretending a ruling exists.

You are permitted to choose which one to carry, and John 8:32 has never once made a person a prisoner of an unsettled question. The written word joins truth to freedom, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives somebody permission to stop hunting.

And then do the thing that has not been done for fourteen days, which is the actual test.

Say the name out loud. Before it is settled. Before the ruling that is not coming. In a sentence, to a person, with all three meanings still open and none of them decided.

Because here is what has actually been happening: the researching has been standing in for the saying. It has felt like progress and it has moved nothing at all, and a woman who has read forty pages has not once put the name in a room.

You have been working hard on the wrong thing, and Scripture puts the freedom in a knowing that a search engine cannot supply. John 8 promises a truth that makes free, and the Holy Spirit is present in a room where a name gets said before every question is closed.