First of all… naming your child is hard work! This time around, we had no girl names we liked and our only boy option was Bodhi. Unfortunately, for the first half of the pregnancy I was not on team Bodhi, no matter how hard Andrew pushed. Once we found out we were having a baby boy I started to hop on board, and now I can’t imagine our son being named anything else.
But where did Bodhi come from? Soon after we were set on Lola’s name, Andrew fell in love with the name Bodhi from Patrick Swayze’s character in the movie Point Break. Andrew loved the character and the meaning of the name. “Bodhi” comes from “Bodhisattva”, a Buddhist term meaning awakening or enlightenment.
Now that we had a first name, the hunt for a middle name was on. We knew we wanted something meaningful yet unique (to go along with Lola’s middle name of Moon). The first one we considered was Riot. We both liked the sound of it, but there wasn’t a unique meaning assigned to it. Maybe we could attribute it to the crazy kicks he was putting his mom through? Next was Rush. Again, we liked the sound of it, but this time there were a few more associations. It is the nickname of Andrew’s favorite UFC fighter, George St. Pierre, and Andrew has seen the band Rush with his best friend Brian a few different times. We were pretty much set on Rush at that point.
Once Bodhi Rush was born, we found some additional ties to his name (or almost name):
-Just a few days after his birth, Black Lives Matter protests began in response to George Floyd’s murder. At this same time riots broke out in across the country, meaning our Bodhi Rush was almost Bodhi Riot the week national riots were happening.
-George “Rush” St. Pierre is being inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2020 (GSP Video).
-And my personal favorite: a few weeks after Bodhi was born, my dad found the below sheet showing that Bodhi’s great-great-great-great grandfather was named Benjamin Rush.
meet the butters 