Finnegan
Real Name: Finnegan Emmaus Tabor
Known Aliases: Fin-gin, Brother Finn, Huckleberry Finnegan, Mr. Finn, Bubba, Di-di (Mandarin for “youngest brother”), Stinky “D”, Mr. Di
Born: January 29, 2011
Fun Facts
My name is very special, it means “fair” in Irish Gaelic, my parents knew I would be handsome. My middle names are “Emmaus Tabor”, which has two meanings. Emmaus, for when the disciples were walking after talking to Jesus and their “hearts burned within them” (LK 24:13-35) And Tabor, which is the name of the only dormant volcano within city limits in the US. So I was named for the passion I will have in my life. Another fun thing about me is that I was born on my Grandma Nita’s birthday, which is fun because brother was born on Grandpa Scott’s birthday. My favorite thing to do right now is sing and make music. Daddy says I am going to be a great drummer, and mommy says I sing well. I live in Portland, so when the sun is out I play with my ducks and chickens in our back yard. I love to travel, hiking is really fun and seeing new things makes me happy.
My Song
(sung to the tune, “Michael Finnegan”)
There once was a lad named Mr. Finnegan
He’d scream and he’d shout, he’d make a din-egan
He’d eat and he’d sleep and then he’d wake again
Oh, young Mr. Finnegan
Begin again
My Name
We enjoy giving our children names with significance. These are some that we chose.
FINNEGAN: “Fair” Young Finn
We’ve known for some time that if we were to have another boy, we’d name him Finnegan. We loved the sound of “Eoghan and Finn” and thought, “Wow, let’s name him that…no matter what it means, it sounds great! So, we’re giving him the name ”Finn” for purely cosmetic reasons. It means “fair” (which won’t be hard to explain, since he’s sure to have our fair complexion and sandy-colored hair as a baby) and it’s traditionally an Irish surname, derived from Ó Fionnagáin meaning ‘descendent of Fionnagán’. The name has been made known to many by the comic novel Finnegans Wake (1939) by the Irish author James Joyce.
TABOR: The Sleeping Volcano
One day, Eoghan and I were hiking in Forest Park (I wrote about this day in The Final Adventure), and near the end of the hike I was thinking about a few different baby names and I had an idea. I knew of a guy named Tabor who came into my coffee shop with his friends every Friday night, and I stopped to briefly consider that name for our baby. Mount Tabor is the name of a dormant volcano here in Portland, the only volcano within city limits in the US ( it’s named after a mountain in Isreal believed by many to be the site of the Transfiguration of Jesus). It’s a modest hill that rises in the middle of Southeast, between downtown and Mount Hood (for all of you Donald Miller fans out there: it’s also the same hill that he writes about it Blue Like Jazz, where he’d ride up to the top and watch all the city lights at night). Many cute houses sprawl their way up the base of Mount Tabor, and there are many trails and bikepaths on Tabor as well. Some of these trails we took to pick blackberries after TESOL last summer (Finn was there with us then), and there’s a favorite playground near the top that has amazing lighting when the sun is setting over Forest Park and the light is reflecting on the tall evergreen trees of Tabor.
As I was hiking in Forest Park I thought about the significance of this name, Tabor. I smiled to think about naming him after a landmark here in Portland. We’ve enjoyed our time here so much that naming him after the city in this way seemed fitting. But more than this, I relished the idea that is Tabor–a volcano at heart. There is so much [crazy, ridiculous, insane!] potential that comes with the presence of a sleeping volcano in the middle of this city. Potential for beauty, for disaster, for awe. I wanted our baby to know that he held that same potential sleeping within his chest. That he had our blessing to one day wake from his slumber and surprise us all.
EMMAUS: Burning Hearts
When Eoghan and I returned from our hike I was a little anxious to tell Cortnie about the name Tabor. Before I was able to tell her, she asked me about this name, Emmaus. This is the name of a village mentioned in Luke’s account of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead (Luke 24:13-35). As a few men are walking toward the village of Emmaus they meet Jesus along the way, but they don’t recognize him as they spend the rest of the day with him. They have him over for dinner, and as Jesus is blessing the meal and sharing the food with them they finally recognize him…as soon as they understand who he is, he vanishes in front of them. It’s then they powerfully describe the effect his presence had on them that day, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?” For these people, encountering Jesus and spending the day with him placed a burning in their hearts. A feeling that Cort and I, and many of our kindred friends and family can associate with at one time or another.
As Cortnie and I talked about the name Emmaus, we read the passage one more time, exclaiming at how much we’ve always enjoyed this intimate story about a few men’s burning hearts. Then I tell her how I had thought of the name Tabor on the trail earlier that day, and it only took a few seconds before we made the link between the fiery embers building below Mount Tabor and the embers that were burning in the chests of those men that day on the road to Emmaus. Let’s use both of these, we thought. We discussed fusing Emmaus & Tabor into one name, calling him “Embor”, or Embry (which means “ember”), but for now we like keeping them seperate and individually significant.
An interesting note about the name Emmaus comes from the first century historian, Josephus (3o-c.100 A.D.). In describing Tiberias on the Lake of Gennesaret, he writes that there are warm baths not far away in a village named Emmaus. In another place he says that the name Emmaus may be interpreted as meaning “warm baths,” being derived from a spring of warm water within the city. To date however, there is no trace of there ever being a hot spring at Emmaus (for all we know, the Romans in Emmaus heated their baths artificially, as was often the case). But it’s intriguing to me to consider the possibility of a hot spring existing somewhere beneath Emmaus.
It just hasn’t come to the surface yet. But it will, one day.
