Thursday, December 24, 2009

Yousef or Hamza

I wanted to just tell a short story on how we decided on the name Yousef for our baby boy who is now 9 mths MashaAllah.

When we found out i was pregnant, we were discussing names shortly thereafter. We found a moslem baby names site and browsing all the names.. I picked out three and hubby and  i agreed on quite a few and couldn't choose just one. So we chose the name Hamza. Although this is not my favorite name of all time and InshaAllah if and when we have another boy i will name him by my favorite name. But anyways i loved the name Hamza. So cute. So when my family started asking me what would we name our baby alot of them said they could nickname him Hammy for short (if he was on the chubby side meaning he is a pig). I freaked out.. ahh! a moslem named Hammy, are you kidding after something haram.. i started to think too if kids chose to tease him in school what would they say.. and so i prayed about it.. because the name you choose to name your child is very important as it will stick with them for life, and i didnt want people to nickname him anything especially something with a bad connotation.


In this time i was listening to Mishary Rashid recite Surat Al Yousef.Thought about the name and how i liked it even before i was moslem. (Joseph) Yousef had a very nice sound. Anyways i didnt bring it up to hubby and decided to wait, and digest all the information first. Going back to think of the other names we chose.(Yousef still stuck out in my mind though) with hubby not knowing anything this is what totally sealed the baby boys name in my stomach..

Hubby had said when he was about 15 or 16 his sister would tease him (by a very respectful way) and say "when you get married your going to have a boy first and name him Yousef and forever after you will be known as Abou Yousef" So his sisters all started calling him Abou Yousef when he was just 15 or 16. I had heard the stories before, but it didnt really mean anything til the last time he was talking about it. Hubby didnt realize to at this time i had considered changing the babys name to something else other than Hamza.

So when i told him i wanted to change the name from Hamza to Yousef. He thought about it a little. I could see he liked the idea because he had a huge smile on his face.
You know, (he said) deep down always wanted to be known as Abou Yousef, but i didnt want to force my wife to name our child that.. and kind of had my mind set you would choose a different name, but i couldnt be more happy" he smiled and looked at me "Okay Umm Yousef, Let us go to eat now" and we went for halal chinese.

Little did i know that the name would fit our little boy so perfectly.. i look at him and sometimes inside myself and say Hamza.. no no no that wont do.. he doesnt look like a Hamza..

Ya Yousef, Yebni Yousef. His name suits him just fine. and i am so happy we chose that name for him.
Alhamdulilah

The names we had picked out:
Hamza, Younus, Hafiz, Hakim, and Yousef. (we had a few others but these are the ones we agreed on)

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