Struan (n.) The place where a stream begins… a place of birth and growth and spilling goodness out into all the world.
Sitting around a table in Belfast, the Americans asked the Scot what his name meant.
“It’s Scots Gaelic for ‘the place where a stream begins.'”
“Hmm,” I thought, “I like that,” and I tucked it into my memory.
A few days after Robert said our house needed a name, it floated up to the surface.
Struan.
Wikipedia throws in a technicality and says it can mean “a small stream” or “the flow at the point where a spring appears,” but I always like to take the word of a local.
The beginning of a stream–a place of birth and growth and spilling goodness out into all the world.
Out of the Rock, water in a dry and weary land.
And streams flow into rivers out of which come stones, memorial. Rivers flow around gardens, watering life, and into the vast and glistening sea. And the sea is for ships and journeys–from one end of the dawn to the other.
All that from a humble beginning called Struan.
“Struan” (pronounced STROO-ahn) is an Anglicized name based on the pronunciation of the Scots Gaelic word “sruthan.”
Definitions of sruthan include: “stream,” “brook,” “flow,” “rivulet,” “streamlet.”
But that’s not all.
If you dig a little deeper you’ll see that it’s the perfect name for people who enjoy books and writing and learning; wisdom and stargazing and gazing into the wonders of God.
And that sounded like some people we know… 😉