I don't want to be overly dramatic about choosing a name for our baby- because people choose names for their kids literally every day and it's just a normal human experience. But I have always really appreciated cultures in which names hold significant meaning. Names feel like a gift, a speaking over our kids a prayer of identity and purpose. We've spent some weeks now thinking about our second daughter's name and the beauty and meaning it holds feels so profound to me that I really wanted to write about it. But you'll need to hang with me for a bit first because it needs some foundational backstory.
Eden's name, Eden Joy, has always made me think of Psalm 16:11- "In Your presence, [God], is fullness of joy. At Your right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Her name is based on the overarching redemptive narrative of Scripture- creation, fall, redemption, restoration.
A brief rabbit trail here. I don't really remember growing up hearing the Bible taught as one overarching redemptive narrative. It could have been taught and I missed it, but I think for the most part, it wasn't interwoven into the church denomination and culture of my upbringing. I remember thinking the Old Testament stories were good moral lessons about people we should try to be like, and then somehow Jesus came later and gave us the Gospel. I really didn't understand how all of the parts of the Bible- from Genesis to Revelation- are telling one big story and all of the stories and history and details are hugely connected and pointing to Jesus and the Gospel. When I started to understand this in my 20's, it blew my mind and deepened my faith profoundly. More for another time. But the point is, the story of the Bible, of the Gospel- creation, fall, redemption, restoration- is incredibly beautiful and profound.
The garden of Eden was a perfect place of joy in connection to God.
Humanity chose to reject God as King and the world became dark and broken.
God sent Jesus to bring redemption through His blood sacrifice in our place.
Through Jesus' resurrection and my surrender of my life to Him as King, I can be restored to the joy of connection with God. One day all of His kingdom will be restored to the Eden quality of joy that it once was.
I love our Eden's name because it is a constant reminder to me of the beauty of what once was and what will be, and the taste of this goodness of knowing God that we are able to experience in part right now. After she was born I found Isaiah 51:3.
"For the LORD comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song."
This was written at a certain time in Jewish history, but the heart of God in it is for us now too. This is the good news that He comforts the places in our lives that feel like a waste and a wilderness desert. He can turn our broken, hopeless, darkness into an Eden, with an Eden quality of joy.
Eden's name is based on a story. Her first name is a place. Her middle name is a quality that describes the place. We're following this same pattern with baby girl #2.
This time the story is The WingFeather Saga, written by Andrew Peterson. It is a fantasy young adult series of 4 novels. Very similarly to the story of Eden, it depicts a true homeland, a rightful kingdom lost to darkness. Everything that was once beautiful and good and true came under a wicked and cruelly dark rule. The exiles of the true kingdom longed for what once was. They were still discovering who they were, where their true place of belonging and inheritance would lie. Their hope was rooted not in what they could see or currently experience, but in the truth of what they knew. This true kingdom, Anniera, was remembered through story and song. In the face of the worst points of darkness and suffering in the story, the exiles would sing the songs of Anniera and these songs held power against the dark forces.
Like Scripture's vision of God's people yearning for their true country, Anniera was real, promised, and enduring, even when it felt impossibly distant. The hope of the exiles was not a naive optimism, but faithful remembrance- quiet, stubborn trust that what was broken can be healed and that love had not had the final word.
Our second baby girl's name is Anniera Hope.
In The WingFeather Saga, Anniera’s kingship was not defined by conquest, but by sacrifice, revealing a kingdom where strength was measured in self-giving love. Its heirs learned that hope was carried forward through faithfulness rather than force, through courage, mercy, and truth in a hostile world. Ultimately, Anniera points beyond itself—to the promise of restoration, a shining country where sorrow is undone and song rises again—declaring that no ruin is final, no exile permanent, and no darkness strong enough to extinguish the light that once shone and will shine again.
I want our little girl to have a heart that sees beyond living for the things of this world. I want us to be able to instill and cultivate in her a heart that sees and longs to more fully see our living, eternal hope, that she would value this most in the choices and priorities she has for her life. I want her life to reflect the beautiful hope and restoration of the Gospel being already purchased and obtained and also not yet fully seen and realized.
While Eden Joy’s name feels more like one that makes my mind go back in time to the beginning of beauty in the garden, the joy felt in God’s presence then, her life reflecting a bit of the pureness of that wonder, the name Anniera Hope makes me think of looking forward in defiant faith towards the future restoration we will have when things return to a state of Eden Joy.
We are spelling the name Anniera like it is in The WingFeather Saga, which I've never seen anywhere else. I've rarely heard the name even with other spellings, but from what I could research of its meaning apart from the story I've just described, it traditionally means "radiant song of light."
I want our little girl to be a worshipper who sings with defiant hope, defiant against the darkness, like Paul and Silas in the prison singing with their shackles on, a little girl whose heart knows her Jesus and His goodness and can sing the songs of Anniera even though it’s not yet fully realized, but remembered, as she looks ahead to what is to come with a living hope.
I know I can’t choose their stories for them. I can’t protect them from sorrow or confusion or darkness. But I can give them names that remind me what story we’re in—and what story I want to keep telling them when life is hard.
Eden Joy reminds me that God’s presence is our true home and our deepest happiness. Anniera Hope reminds me that we are still on the way there—and that remembering, singing, and trusting are acts of quiet courage in a broken world.
My prayer is that both of our girls will grow up knowing Jesus, loving and living in full surrender and allegiance to His kingdom, and learning to sing even when the song feels costly. That they would live with hearts anchored not in what is seen, but in what is promised. And that one day, together, we will stand in the place where Eden is no longer a memory and Anniera is no longer a story—where joy is full, hope is fulfilled, and every exile is finally home.
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Photo by Micah Kunkle on Unsplash
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