Baby Name Story: Fyodor - Given by God

It’s always a lot of thinking when you need to choose the name for your baby. There are many good names but this makes the task still harder. Some people can’t explain why they’ve named their baby so, but the others tell you exciting stories about choosing baby names. I collect these stories and here’s one of my collection.

It is believed there’s something mysterious about naming a baby and that the name can determine the future of the child. That’s why some parents try to find out the meaning of the names before choosing one. Often a baby is named after the great person – the King or President, Olympic champion or movie star.

In Russia there’s a tradition to name the first-born son after his grandfather. This makes the naming process somewhat easier if the family follows this tradition.

Pavel Medvedev, an engineer from St.Petersburg, Russia, and a father of three sons tells this story.

“My name is Pavel. I was named after my grandfather according to our family tradition to call a first-born son after his grandfather. Now, my father’s name is Mikhail and I thought I would call my son after him – Mikhail.

“The problem was that my wife asked me to name our son after HER father, i.e. my father-in-law. Well, I had to yield (after all it was her who borne our baby, so she deserved to name him) and we called our son Vitaly – after my father-in-law.

“Now the problem was that my wife didn’t want any more children. For the next ten years I tried to persuade her to have one more baby. When I managed to do so and our second son was born I naturally called him Mikhail – after my father to follow the family tradition.

“Now, everybody was happy and satisfied. Neither my wife nor I wanted more children, but suddenly 18 months later the third son was born. Actually, we didn’t plan to have him but this smart guy appeared notwithstanding! Well, there’s a fallacy that a nursing woman can’t get pregnant. I think many couples make the same mistake. At least whenever I see children of whom one is a year older than the other (like our second and third sons) I think their parents thought that way.

“We did a lot of thinking to name the third son and then suddenly I said he would be called Fyodor. Neither my wife nor I had relatives or ancestors with this name and everybody was surprised and unhappy with my idea. But I insisted because I was absolutely sure that it was the right name for the boy. Later on I found in the book describing baby names meanings that Fyodor means "given by God". Indeed the boy was given by God. All our relatives later on agreed I had made the right choice.

Q – Pavel, you say this son was given by God. But don’t you think any baby is given by God?

A – Oh, yes, of course. But people believe they can plan their family: how many children to have, when to get them born, even to choose if it will be a boy or a girl. Fyodor was absolutely out of planning. God decided for us that we would have him. And something interesting that I didn’t know the meaning of the name when I thought he would be called Fyodor. But the meaning of the name proved to be just to the point.