What’s in a name?

Posted by admin on Jan 20, 2009 in Arts & Culture | 0 comments

Names are pretty much the first thing we’re stuck with in life, after our parents.

Some of us end up with really awesome names and some of them could quite possibly suck. But we learn to live with them and adapt to them. For instance, I learned how to sing and play music because I was terrified of being a Melody who couldn’t carry a tune. My roommate learned to be open and interesting because she got saddled with a more typical name. Most of the time, a name is just something we’re called, but I wonder if we should think more about what they mean.

This summer I read a book, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, in which the main character is a woman abandoned at birth. She grows up on the margins of the lives of others. Eventually she assumes the identity of another woman in order to have a story to call her own. And yet, she realizes, “I am alone. No name. No home. No family. I am nothing…What kind of a thing am I? Am I even alive? No one sees me…perhaps I am…a ghost.” As I read, this connection between having a name and being a person intrigued me.

In the Webster Dictionary, the definition of a name is “a word or a combination of words by which a person…is designated, called or known.” True, but boring sounding. You’ve probably all heard the quote by Shakespeare, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose would be any other word smell as sweet.” But would it?

In the Bible, a name was like a prophecy. Abraham means “father of many.” Elijah is “my God is Yahweh.” Jesus is “Yahweh is Salvation.” Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter meaning “the Rock.” Peter then went on to be a foundational figure of the new church. Saul’s name was changed to Paul, meaning “humble,” signaled a lifestyle change. At birth a person’s life was given meaning and a purpose: to live up to their name.

Names conjure up so much emotion that gets projected onto the person. Some names automatically sound smart. Some sound like a person you want to get to know. Some sound like happiness incarnate. Some names bring you back to times in your life. You might smile a little when you meet someone with the name of your first big crush or your kindergarten best friend. You feel a little sadder about the names that remind you of your first ex or someone you’ve fought with lately. The connection of emotion and names is an incredible thing.

So why is it that we seem to take our names for granted? Think about having no name for a minute or so. No one would yell at you across the caf because they have no way to grab your attention. No one would write on your Facebook wall because you couldn’t have one. Professors would never call out your name for a participation mark. We would begin to disappear if we had no one to appreciate our existence. Without names, slowly we would cease to exist.

Often we assume names are just a random word our parents assigned to us in the hospital. We think they’re just to designate us as separate or different from our siblings. But in many ways they become who we are.

I’ve heard that your name is all you ever really own, and I think it is true. It’s your most frequent title (although you may be called something else behind closed doors). It can represent your personality. It affects people’s perceptions of what you’ll be like before they ever meet you. Names are an incredible thing that we should think about and appreciate much more often. Without them we would all be like the nameless woman in my book who, like a ghost, haunts the lives of others.