Jessa Duggar waited a week before naming her newborn son. Here’s what she chose
The Duggar family tree has grown by one – and now we know the name of the newborn baby.
Jessa Duggar, the fifth child and third daughter of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar of “19 Kids and Counting,” welcomed her sixth child with husband Ben Seewald on July 26, per her Instagram.
The reality star turned influencer has since been telling her birth story in a series of YouTube videos.
In the third installment of the series, published Aug. 8, Jessa Duggar joked that they should name the newborn baby boy “Pork Chop” because he weighed 10 pounds, 1 ounce at birth.
“But since that’s not on the name list, what else?” she said in the video.
As Duggar and Seewald were sitting in the hospital, they were trying to decide between Owen, Edward and Calvin for the first name and Patrick and Athanasius for the middle name.
On Aug. 11, Jessa Duggar released the fourth installment of the series and revealed that two of the first names made the cut – but neither of the middle names did.
The name they chose? Edward Owen Seewald.
“We liked the sound of Edward from pretty early on in this pregnancy,” Seewald said toward the end of the video. The name was also a big hit with the couple’s other kids.
“We always like historical names, too, so there’s some historical significance with Edward,” he added while name-dropping preacher and philosopher Jonathan Edwards and King Edward VI of England.
According to Behind the Name, Edward is an Old English name that means “rich guard” via the elements “ead,” meaning “wealth,” and “weard,” meaning “guard.”
Other historical baby names for boys include Henry, William, Charles, George, Richard, Thomas, James, Robert and Francis.
As for Owen, Seewald said he was drawn to the name because of John Owen, one of his “favorite theologians.”
Owen either means “well born” in Welsh or “yew tree” in Irish, per Behind the Name.
Both names were included in the Social Security Administration’s top 1,000 most popular boy names of 2024 with Owen ranking 26th and Edward ranking 228th.
