The story behind his name

When we found out that Luke was a boy, the only name we liked right away was Will. After awhile though, Matt wasn't so sold on Will being our son's name. In the back of our head, we did kind of feel a pull toward choosing a biblical name, since Jake and Sam are both derived from Jacob and Samuel of the Old Testament, but most of the pregnancy we could just not decide. Meanwhile a friend from church was talking about the meaning behind the name you chose and that these little guys really do become what they are named. That was the first time I thought to myself, 'I don't need another strong-willed little boy, so maybe Will shouldn't be the name!' We did want to pick a name that had meaning to us, like the other boys. One day probably in the 8th month Matt said how about Luke. He liked that Luke was a physician, just like Matt, and as I researched him, I also liked that he was a historian, evident in his writing, which was always very detailed and he used eye-witnesses to ensure the facts were accurate. I thought, 'wow, Luke sounds just like Matt!' So we decided on Luke. Matt made up a riddle for those curious to hear the name before the birth (which we last minute decided to keep secret). The riddle was this, "this baby is our 3rd born son, just like his father was the 3rd born son. This baby's namesake is another famous third who has something else in common with his dad." (Luke is the 3rd gospel/3rd book in the New Testament and then being a doctor is the commonality.) We were stuck on the middle name still. I was sad about not having a name from his dad to pass on like we did with our first two boys (Jake's middle name is Matthew and Sam's middle name is David). So I really liked Daniel and Matt wanted to use his grandpa's middle name, Ernest. Then about a week before Luke was born, Matt's dad Phil cracked the riddle, but first he guessed "Levi" who was the THIRD son of Jacob. While that was not the answer, Matt started thinking about that name and then realized another cool common thread. In the books of Mark and Luke, the story of Jesus eating with the tax collector, whom he called to follow him as a disciple, was named Levi. In the same story in the book of Matthew, Levi is called Matthew! It was perfect! We finally found a name that uses his dad's name for the middle too! (Now let's hope we don't have a 4th boy or we might be out of luck!)