My Name

The name David means “beloved” or “friend.” This is the first name my parents chose for me after a lot of consideration. They were deciding between several different names: David John, Sean Patrick, and if I was a girl, Grace Catherine. Out of all these, the name David John had the most significance. I am named after my father and my grandfather. The name David is my father’s middle name, and John is my grandfather’s name. Because I was going to be their first born son, my parents wanted me to have a strong connection to the family. They decided not to make my first name John because I already had two uncles, and a cousin named John, and they did not want to add another one to the family. The real deciding factor in naming me David John was during my mother’s pregnancy with me; my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer and passed away. Since I was never able to meet him, they wanted me always to carry on his memory.

The name David is very popular. In fact, in 1995 (the year I was born), it was the sixteenth most common name for babies in the United States, and in 2009, it was the fourteenth most popular name. There are variations of the name in almost every language. The name has Old Testament biblical origin. There is only one David mentioned in the Bible, and his name occurs more than a thousand times. Everybody has probably heard the story of David and Goliath. David was only a child, but he was able to defeat the much larger Goliath, whom everybody else was scared of, in battle. David went on to become a king, poet, and musician.