What's In a Name?

Do you feel that it's important to feel a sense of connection with your name? Is your name part of your identity?

Or are names just meaningless labels?

I'm thinking more of legal names here as opposed to online/TOTJO names, but many people choose an online name that they feel fits them better, so it's all relevant...

My names have changed over time. They are a little more than 'labels' but they do not necessarily mean 'who I am' either. We are evolving beings - so it stands to reason that a name may change a little (or completely) to reflect that evolution.

For instance, a little boy, James William Mann (example) : as a child he may be called "Jimmy", then a little later on when moving toward adulthood, "Jim" or perhaps "James". By the time he gets toward middle-age, he may decide that that name is sort of worn out, and decide to answer to a second name "William", "Will" or "Bill".

And sometimes even, the name that others use (after all, if one is living all alone on a desert world, one doesn't even need a name) depends on the relationship to those particular others. In England and America, I'm known as "Alex", yet here in France, many call me "Benjamin" ... or "Benji" ... or "Ben". And some others call me "Alex" or "Alexandre". Yet others call me by a really ancient name that hasn't been used in centuries, but it is how they think of me. The name is the word that refers to the person they've come to know under that particular symbol or image.

Albert Jacquard wrote (and I don't remember in which book ... La Legende de la vie, I think, maybe) that we are individual organisms all alone - specimens, sort of. It is only in relationship to others are any of us 'a person' - the mask, the identity, the interlocutor or whatnot ... So, the name then, is the property of the 'person', not necessarily to the individual.

Great topic, Vicky !

I don't think that it's necessarily important to have a strong connection to one's name.. My name is Kerry-Ann.. but I have always disliked it so I usually shorten it to K-A or just Kay. My friends get away with calling me Kerry but I'll never call myself that to my clients at work.

My surname is more part of my identity that my first name... my fiance and I have discussed both changing our surnames when we get married, because he doesn't feel like a 'Smith' say, and I am not a 'Jones'.

For me, the name I choose to go by here is more important to me than my real name because it's a reflection of how I feel.

V-Tog wrote: Do you feel that it's important to feel a sense of connection with your name? Is your name part of your identity?

Or are names just meaningless labels?

I'm thinking more of legal names here as opposed to online/TOTJO names, but many people choose an online name that they feel fits them better, so it's all relevant...

I've wrestled with the possibility of a legal name change for over a dozen years, because I feel like one should have a connection with their name. It's important, I think, because it's the most potentially apt label we can have.

You could call me a writer, or a jerk, or a craftsman, or a theologist, or a gamer, or whatever else, but these are only labels for a facet of my personality. A name, my name, is a label of my whole self--it's the label I give to the sum total of the unique attributes that is everything I am. It's the label I give to the collection of labels that is me, and no one else. It's the closest I can get in language to expressing myself as I truly am.

So, yes. I think it's important.

I think it's important to at least like your name. You have to live with it and hear it everyday. It's how people identify you. Personally I've always gone by the long form of my name because the shorter versions just didn't feel right to me. I still answer to multiple forms of it if a person doesn't know me very well yet though. It's actually kind of a mark of how much I care about a person if I take the time to correct them. lol.

I felt more connected to my legal name after knowing why my parent's chose it. I also enjoyed learning the etymology of my name.

Maybe my name (the one designated to me by society) is only as important as I make my own social conditioning to be. But maybe its more up to that society that provided it to worry about its importance than myself. Regardless, it is always up to me whatever I "make of my name".

My first name is George. My middle, Ethan. Over years of memories of my brother verbally thrashing my first name, it became somewhat of a stress trigger when hearing anyone call me by it. So one day, when I began visiting a coffeehouse and made a new family of friends for the first time in several years, they asked me what my name was. When they did, I was about to say "George", but then... something stopped me. I wasn't living with my brother anymore and was starting a bit of a new life, and this realization triggered at that moment, which led me to answer with "Ethan". From then (2004) on, everyone who had not already known me as George, would know me by Ethan. "George" is left for immediate family and business forms, whereas Ethan is what represents my own personal freedom to be whatever I will be beyond all the conditioning brought on by the stress of society.

I like my given name well enough. I know why my father chose it and that amuses me. I will never be Alexander of Macedon. Just as well. If I had to change it, I think I could. I'm used to it, but any name would just be a label for Me.

I go back and forth on my family name. There are plenty of Birds in the world, so I'm not carrying a legacy or anything. Still, I appreciate the historicity of it. The name brings a story with it. I suppose every last name does, but I am not a character in all of those stories. I thought that I might change my last name to my mother's maiden name, as there were no men to carry it, but I ended up not doing that. It wasn't necessary. Also, stories are allowed to end.

Names are powerful! meanings are a vibration and a person needs to resonate with that name.

Well my name on here: Ste'ar Galach is of some significance to me.
Ste'ar being a combination of my real first and second names.
Gaelach being gaelic for "moon" - as I have always been interested in astronomy and always seemed to find the moon mystical in a way but equally beautiful. Those who have been lucky enough to see a moonbow ( for example ) will know what I mean. The moon also has several connections and symbolic importance in celtic mythology as well as mythology all over the globe in general. The moon has a subtle influence on every day life, such as the tides and our day night cycle too..
So yeah, my name has a significance for me.

Well I'm somewhere in the middle on this. My mother will insist that God (יהוה) spoke to her before I was born and gave me my legal name. She will continually bring this up any time I try to tell her that my name is Jamie. It's an awful back and forth that ends with me feeling subhuman and my mother feeling ever more vindicated in her religious effery.

I think place should have the right to call themselves what they want to be called and others should respect that. I'm not tied to any idea of power behind names or that meanings behind names are anything more than fun things to think about. I think that perhaps if I had not grown up in such a strict environment where names were so important that perhaps I would enjoy them a little more, but I've seen nothing but absurdity surrounding names.