An important part of Isaac’s birth story that is important to note is how our little man got his name. Throughout the pregnancy, Tom and I had talked about names and what we thought would be a good name for our son. Last April (2017) we took a cross-country road trip as we moved Tom from Boston to Utah, and along the way we stopped at various Church history sites. As we did, it struck me just what a neat thing it is to be part of Hyrum Smith’s posterity. Much is known about the Prophet Joseph and he is revered as the first prophet of our dispensation, but what I realized on this Church history tour was that his brother Hyrum, my fifth great grandfather, was there nearly the entire time and right by his side.

It was then that we started thinking about family names and in fact really liked the name Hyrum! Pretty much the entire pregnancy we had decided that was what we’d name our son, and while we went back and forth on it, in the end it seemed like the option we’d choose. We also liked the idea of naming him William Max, after our two fathers, so that was a back-up option just in case. Well, when our baby boy was born, neither name quite felt right! Tom and I would look at him, look at each other, and it just wasn’t sitting right with us that his name was Hyrum – or William or Max or Thomas, for that matter! So, for the first two days of his life, our little man didn’t have a name! When we sent everyone the announcement texts, we couldn’t include a name because we didn’t have one! Then on Thursday evening, we had a few quiet moments and so we decided we should actually try to figure it out. Not wanting to go with any of the names we’d chosen, but still wanting to go with a family name, we pulled out our phones and opened the Church’s FamilySearch app and just started going through all the male names!

We started with my line, and four generations up on my Grandpa Turley’s line, we came across the name Isaac Turley. As I read the name, Tom and I looked at each other and had this thought that it could be our little guy’s name. It was a name neither of us had ever considered before, but it definitely struck us as a name that we both liked. We kept reading through names on both of our sides and in the end, we came back to Isaac and thought that could be his name! It was a little hard for me to give up Hyrum, but we just knew that wasn’t his name; but, perhaps it could be for another child we may have in the future, so we haven’t ruled it out entirely.

As we started to really consider Isaac more, I realized that we probably should look into Isaac Turley and make sure he wasn’t some crazy person who we were thinking of naming our son after! We started looking up stories in the FamilySearch app, and we came across a biographical sketch about Isaac Turley and there was a really neat story in it that stood out to us. Apparently Isaac Turley was the same age as Joseph F. Smith, the son of Hyrum Smith, and after the martyrdom when Hyrum’s family crossed the plains, Isaac’s family was with them and in fact, Isaac and Joseph F. Smith were young boys who jointly pulled a handcart as part of the company. It was really neat to see this connection to Hyrum Smith, a connection we’d wanted with his name, and it’s interesting that these two names intersected when one name comes from my maternal side and the other comes from my paternal side. It was just a really special moment to see that there was still some connection to the name Hyrum Smith that we’d loved so much!

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At this point, we’d pretty much decided that Isaac was this little guy’s name and we were excited that we’d come to a decision! It was then that Tom thought of the name Isaac from the Bible, so I looked up in the Bible dictionary and we read about Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, who was a miracle for them in their older age. Reading this brought tears to my eyes because I realized that while our story isn’t the same as Abraham and Sarah’s, there are definitely similarities and it was neat to have yet another confirmation and connection to the name we had chosen for our little man.

In the end, the name we chose is Isaac Thomas Bowcut and we feel that it fits him just perfectly!  He is named after wonderful men and he comes from a strong heritage, and we are so excited to see the impact that this Isaac will have on the world!