Why Caleb?

I promised that I would dedicate a post to why we have chosen the name Caleb Matthew for the little boy growing inside of me. So here it is. Initially when we set out thinking about names we were definitely only thinking of girl names. For some reason it seemed like it would be easier to pick a boy name to go with Grace. So while we had a short list of girl names and even one that we were pretty set on we didn't really have a good list of boy names the day we found out Caleb was a boy.

One thing that is really important to us in choosing a name is that it has meaning connected to our Christian faith. There are many boy names in the Bible that are very usable so we started there. In the end we had it narrowed down to Noah and Caleb. But Caleb stood out above and beyond Noah to us for a few reasons.

According to most baby books the name Caleb means dog or also faithful and bold. Dog isn't the funnest thing to say your name means but faithful and bold are definitely good qualities to have.

We also love the story of Caleb in the Bible. The summary of it is Joshua and Caleb were two of twelve spies who went to scope out the land that God had promised their people. Joshua and Caleb put their trust in God and his strength and power, while the other ten spies doubted they could defeat the people in the land God had promised them. They said this to the people to declare their faith in God and his promises.

So with that story we had an amazing name. Also, our nephew is named Joshua so it seemed perfect. We were leaning very strongly towards the name Caleb and on the brink of making the final decision when at church that Sunday the verses our pastor preached on were the story of Joshua and Caleb. At that point it was set. Caleb is the name we chose for our son.

Oh and the middle name Matthew. Well we thought that we'd carry on Caleb's fathers name and Matt wanted some attention:)