Gabriel YoungMin

Today Gabe is 8 months, and I thought we could mark the occasion by explaining how we chose his name.

Gabriel
There are a few reasons why we chose this name, starting with honoring both our of our families. We followed Dave's Jewish tradition of using the first initial of a relative that has passed on to pick a new name for the baby. We wanted to name our baby after my Papa, George, who was my Greek grandfather that I loved dearly. We also prefer traditional, biblical names and both really liked the name Gabriel and Gabe. Since Gabriel the Angel was God's messenger, it seemed like the perfect choice.

YoungMin
The name he was given in Korea was 영 민. According to his paperwork, his name means 'brilliant' and 'wise.' The social worker at the agency in Korea named him in hopes that he would become clever and bright. This name is very much a part of him and his Korean heritage, and it is important to us that he keeps it.
He was named using Korean characters, Hangul. After conferring with many Korean Americans, the most common translation of 영 민 is Young Min. To help encourage westerners to keep it as one name we are making it one word, but capitalizing the "M," making it YoungMin (pronounced just as it looks).

We hope our angel grows up to be clever and bright and would make Papa proud.