What's In A Name?

One of the reasons I was most excited to have children was to name them. When I became pregnant for the first time, circa 2009, I purchased a large book of name meanings, and began pouring over it.  To me, it is a weighty matter, this naming of humans.  Whether we choose to name our children after someone we love or admire, or whether we choose a name because we love what it means, or simply because we like the way it sounds, we are labeling a person for life. What a responsibility!

One would think that I would choose my children's nicknames with the same intentionality and love with which I chose their true names.  Especially since I often call them by these nicknames far more often than I call them by their actual names.  My first son, Asher, has the most nicknames and they make the least sense. He is "Bean," "Beany," "Beany Baby," "Asher-Doo," "Sugar-boy," "Sugar Biffin," "Ash-a-smash," and so many more.  At least none of these are unkind.  My twins, Nora and Abel, have nicknames that make more sense, but they are far less flattering.  At first, I simply called Nora "Little," because her build was petite.  That was cute.  Unfortunately, as her brother filled out and grew hair, and she remained skinny and bald, "Little" morphed into "Gollum." (If you don't know this reference, we should be friends.)  On the flip side, Nora's twin brother Abel was originally dubbed "Cutes McGee," (the "cute" part is self-explanatory, the "McGee" is entirely without meaning).  As he filled out and Nora became Gollum, Abel became "Fats McGee."  Now, before you judge me, I should be clear that these names stay within the home.  I don't go to the grocery store talking baby talk to Gollum and Fats McGee.  My entourage and I get enough stares as it is. 

Sugar-boy

Fats and Gollum

A fascination with names runs in my family, at least as far back as my maternal grandmother. I had always known my Grandma's name to be Juanita Jernigan, but she was born Beulah Orndoff.  At the time of her birth, her parents worked for Camp Beulah, a Christian campground whose owners thought it would be great if their pregnant employees would name their child after the campground.  Makes sense. (Wait, what?) The camp owners offered financial compensation in the form of a furnished nursery for the first family to take them up on the offer, which sounded like a sweet deal to my great-grandparents. Come August 1935, baby Beulah Orndoff was born.  Unfortunately, my Grandma hated her name, largely due to teasing from her class-mates about its origin.  At the ripe old age of 8, she begged her mom to let her pick a new name.  Her mother, understandably unattached to the name, agreed, and Grandma renamed herself Juanita Darlene Orndoff.

Names matter to people.  An article in The Week Magazine called names our "badges bearing information about our class, education level, and ethnic origin."  People believe certain things about us based on our names, and these beliefs (even if inaccurate) have the potential to shape our lives.  The article traces the importance of our names back to the Romans, who had the saying, "nomen est omen, or 'name is destiny.'

Names help people to know who we are, and we all want to be known.  I was reminded of this when talking with my baby (17-year-old) sister Deborah, who recently moved from a tiny town in rural Canada to big ol' Dallas, Texas.  She went from living in a place where everyone knew who she was and what she was about, to a place where no one in her massive high school even knows her name (at least not yet - this is no ordinary girl we're talking about here).  While our name may not say everything about who we are, if someone can call us by our name, we feel like we have been seen, and valued, even if only for a moment.  Maybe this is why it's such a precious idea to people that God knows our name.  He can pick us out of a crowd, and out of the billions of people on Earth, he knows each one of us intimately enough to call us by name.

What a sweet truth, and yet, God's been showing me that there is more to this idea than I originally thought.  Yes, God knows us by the names given to us by our parents.  But he has also never been limited by the names on our birth certificates.  In the Bible, while Hebrew culture clearly considered naming children a serious matter, there are many occasions when God seemed to hold earthly names rather loosely.  Take the apostle Peter; he'd grown up with the name Simon.  A good, solid Hebrew name, one that had served him well enough for thirty plus years. One day, Jesus up and renames him Peter, meaning "the rock": "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:18). Bam.  Simon was an okay name for an impulsive, flaky fisherman; Peter was the perfect name for a passionate, unshakable world changer.

Another of my favorites is Gideon. God (or an angel of God) finds Gideon hiding from his enemies in his family's winepress, living in a home that is filled with pagan gods.  Gideon knows what is right but is too afraid to do anything about it.  And yet, the way the angel greets Gideon is, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior." Gideon kindly informs the angel that he is, in fact, the weakest member of the entire nation of Israel, and he even tries to prove it by being cowardly on several future occasions.  And yet, the Lord stubbornly, purposefully calls him "mighty warrior" instead of something more appropriate, like "weak sauce."  He doesn't call him what he is, he calls him what he is meant to be. 

God doesn't call us what we are, He calls us what we are meant to be.  Yes, he knows us by name, but that holds deeper meaning than simply knowing us by the name everyone else calls us.  He knows our God-given names, the names that tell the story of what we are called to do for his kingdom in this beautiful, crazy world.  And the most powerful thing about it is He calls us these new names (our literal "callings") before we have done anything to prove we can live up to them.  God is the original prophet.  He sees through our best efforts to sabotage ourselves and, often in our worst moments, He reminds us who we actually are.  He calls us out.

My family and I recently flew out of state and had a seven hour layover. This, as you can imagine with two toddlers and a preschooler, was a special opportunity to spend some sweet time together as a family.  Toward hour six, however, my son Abel had had just about enough family time.  He walked his little two-year-old self out to the middle of the airport terminal, and threw an award-winning tantrum.  It was really impressive.  He screamed his patented scream: a primal, gutteral, ear-piercing scream that makes nails on a chalkboard sound like the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.  As he stood there screaming, my husband and I (who were so tired at this point, we were just watching the whole thing unfold like awesome, uninvolved parents) observed as a tiny, practically microscopic baby Hispanic girl toddled out to where Abel was standing and wrapped her tiny, petite arms around his waist.  She just held him, in a big bear hug (if the bear was tiny and cuddly and adorable).  Abel's maniacal screams instantly ceased, and there was a hush of silence in the terminal (except for the "awww" that was quietly offered by all observers).  When tiny "Isabella" was pried off of Abel by her grandma, Abel silently turned around, walked back to me, crawled up into my lap and laid his head on my shoulder.  Tantrum over.

Honestly, it felt like a heavenly moment.  What makes this story so powerful to me is that baby Isabella did for Abel what God does for every one of us.  She saw his ugliest self, and instead of avoiding him or treating him as the person he was behaving as, she held him close and treated him as one who deserves love. With her actions, she called him loveable, even when he was doing his best to prove that he wasn't.  Loving the unlovable: isn't that really the most prophetic act there is?

I want to be more like God, and Isabella (whose name interestingly means "Consecrated to God" or "discerning spirit.").  I don't want to simply know people by their earthly names, or even by what they act like on a daily basis.  I want to see beyond the surface and know who people are meant to be.  I want to help call out the best in people, and bless them to be the men and women God made them to be.  I want to see the cowards and call them mighty warriors.  I want to see the flighty, impulsive ones and call them solid rocks.  I want to see barren couples and call them mothers and fathers of great nations (Sarai and Abram - another jaw-dropping name story).  I want to see the unlovable and call them sons and daughters of Love himself.  I want to know peoples' names.

And so, my fascination with names continues.  Nomen est omen.  Name is destiny.  What is mine?

What's yours?