Today's commentary ought to raise a lot of interest. In it Dr Kania explores the issue of how our name can affect our personality and outlook on life. He raises many intriguing ideas that merit our quiet reflection.

Some light relief to commence the baptismal ceremony…

Fr. O'Reilly had baptized James, and James's father before him. In fact there were not many people still living in the area that had not been baptized by the Irish priest. Over eighty years old, Fr. O'Reilly was more than a legend in the small country farming town. Therefore it was only fitting that when James became a father that he would take his bundle of joy to be baptized by Fr. O'Reilly. The church was filled with family and friends, and as Fr. O'Reilly proceeded to begin the baptismal rite, he asked the question of the parents: "And what name do you wish your child to be known?" James replied, "Hazel". Fr. O'Reilly with a quizzical expression, baby balanced in his arms, lent over and asked the father, "What was the name?" "Hazel, Father", replied James. Then with a strange look of compassion in his aged face, Fr. O'Reilly held the girl and addressed her in front of the congregation: "Three hundred and sixty five days in every year, and each one has a Saint's name – and they had to call you after a bally nut!"

Dr. Albert Mehrabian of the University of California, in 2002 released the findings of his study, "Baby Name Report Card: Beneficial and Harmful Baby Names". According to Mehrabian: "My basic thesis, then, is that it is extremely important for parents to recognize that names can have beneficial and harmful effects on their offspring. Imagine a parent who has identical twins, loves them equally, and raises them in almost nearly the same way. However, imagine also that this parent selects a desirable name, [x], for one of the twins and inadvertently selects and undesirable name, [y], for the other. Chances are rather high that [X] will have a significant advantage over [y] throughout their lifetimes. [x] compared to [y] is more likely to (a) have a better and more secure self-image, (b) be regarded more positively by others, (c) be psychologically healthy, or (d) be treated well at school by teachers and fellow students or later in life by coworkers and superiors".

Mehrabian's study drew together decades of academic research to confirm that one of the most important gifts a child receives in life which helps determine their eventual place in society is their name. As Mehrabian concludes: "Irrespective of whether we are aware of it, wish it or not, our names make statements about us to others". Parents being only human sometimes get the naming of their child quite wrong, even those parents who themselves enjoy universal esteem, such as the humanitarian worker, Sir Bob Geldof. In an interview in January 2006, one of the children of Sir Bob, Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa, made the comment: "I hate ridiculous names. My weird name has haunted me all my life". (The West Magazine, January 28, 2006, p. 38)

William Shakespeare

Many people are aware of the famous phrase from William Shakespeare's tragic love story, Romeo & Juliet (II, ii, 1-2): "What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet." The point that Shakespeare seeks to make is that names do have power in themselves by the connotations that they leave when hearing them. In the case of Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers, the two warring families, the Montagus and Capulets, were like the rose, if you took their name away they would be ordinary people who one could quite possibly fall in love with – only their name prevented such a possibility, thus leading to the question: "What's in a name?" A lot it seems.

Two thousand years before Shakespeare wrung tears from his Elizabethan audience, the philosopher Socrates in a conversation with two men in Athens, Hermogenes and Cratylus debated the significance of names which we give things and which we ourselves bear. As Socrates stated in Cratylus, "the correctness of every name we analyzed was intended to consist in its expressing the nature of one of the things that are". What Socrates was meaning was that the name which you bear should indicate the character which you seek to strive toward, or that which depicts your essence. From such a rationale we derive in the former case the traditional naming of children after the Saints, and in the latter case the reasoning behind the use of surnames and patronyms and matronyms. Socrates even alluded to the rescinding of a person's name if they did not live up to the name that had been given to them.

Names therefore are far from insignificant — they say something about each one of us, and if we are to accept Mehrabian's thesis, they help shape who we eventually become; equally they help govern how we interact with people and things.

Yet the great Socrates, pagan Greek philosopher as he was, a man ever willing to venture into the streets of Athens to debate topics at random with strangers, refused in Cratylus to enter into a discourse behind the naming of God — this he said was beyond the human intellect. Humans and things can be named as they are finite and as a parcel can be wrapped, so a name can be borne of a finite being — but what of God who is infinite and beyond all comprehension, a Being who cannot be parceled or compartmentalized, who we cannot grasp so as to name?

YHWH Graphic from the cover of an Italian book

The Old Testament provides us with some answers. We hear in Exodus how the prophet Moses sought to know the name of the God with whom he was conversing. According to Scripture, (Exodus 3: 13 – 15, The New Jerusalem Bible), the actual name for God in this passage was for the Jewish people so sacred that it was never to be spoken — too pure to be uttered by mere mortals. Scripture scholars today will say that the best transliteration into the English language of how the God of Moses chose to name himself, is: "YHWH" (Yahweh), and that from this the best interpretation of this name from the Hebrew is, "He who causes to exist" or "He Brings Into Existence Whatever Exists". We see the usage of YHWH quite powerfully within the ancient Christian tradition. In Eastern theology the Tetragrammaton (four-letter name for God), is depicted on most of the icons of Christ but according to the Greek alphabet, using the Greek letters, omicron, omega, nu: "HO-ON" – meaning in English, "Who AM". Christ is God and with the Father and the Holy Spirit – is that Being, who causes everything to exist, and the iconographers wanted those who prayed to read this when they gazed upon the icon.

So what is in a name? Everything, and everything in the truest sense of the word. Without names the sentences we construct would have no subjects, and therefore have no meaning, and similarly without names we would not have personal identity, not only in our own age, but within the context of time, we would not know how to recollect our ancestors, nor refer to our descendants. Yet not all names are equal. Without the Being who gave us the name YHWH, nothing that we know as ever having existed, would indeed have existed. Therein lies the imperative to keep such a name holy, for we were given the Name YHWH, not by mere whim of a parent who liked a particular fruit over another, or by a mother who had an appreciation of the life of a Saint, nor by a father who had a favourite footballer he wanted his child to emulate, but we were given this name out of the very mouth of God. The Divine Name was given to us not for the sake of YHWH, but for our own sakes so that we could understand ourselves better within time and place, and know the value of the words which we utter in our short lives — and come to understand better the voice and meaning of the Word which is spoken to us.

Image Credits: The headline image has been borrowed from a commercial site offering Christening Gowns: christening-gowns.us. Click on the images for the original source.

©2008 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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