discussion on Names

In his wonderful book Run with Horses , Eugene Peterson reminds us of many of the ways in which modern life de-personalizes and degrades us. We become a number and not a name. We are valued for wha...

The meaning of a name is not discovered through scholarly etymology or through meditative introspection. It is not validated by bureaucratic approval. And it certainly is not worked up through the van...

What’s in a name? The history of the human race is in names. Our objective friends do not understand that, since they move in a world of objects which can be counted and numbered. They reduce the grea...

Epithets can chip away at the image of God in us. Name-calling and identity theft are felonious offenses against divinity and humanity. Blasphemy. Those of us who have been victims of identity theft o...

Dr. Joseph Hartounian, a former professor at McCormick Theological Seminary, came to America from Armenia. One day a well-meaning friend said to him, “Your name is difficult to pronounce and difficult...

A recent article from Ars Technica shared a few hilarious stories of a few recent naming contests. The moral of the story is, be careful what you choose to allow others to come up with. For example,...

The Lord’s Prayer begins, “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name” (Matthew 6:9). The term “hallowed” and the word “holy” comes from the same root word. It means “apart, or sanctified.” Go...

The most poignant and powerful time for me in the film 12 Years a Slave was not when the beatings took place or the general degradation meted out to the hero as a matter of course or even the general ...

Is your last name Smith, Miller, Cooper, or Baker? Many surnames have their origin in the trades that your ancestors were identified with. Today, especially with the rise of the “gig economy,” people ...

There is a story—likely apocryphal—of Alexander the Great discovering a soldier asleep at his post, a grave offense. When the guard was brought before him, the king asked his name. “Alexander,” the yo...

In the introduction to Tim Chester’s Book Truth We Can Touch , Sinclair Ferguson shares a conversation he had with a doctoral student from the Far East: I knew him as “Timothy.” But one day, when...

Now, in the Bible a name … reveals the very essence of a thing, or rather its essence as God’s gift…. To name a thing is to manifest the meaning and value God gave it, to know it as coming from God an...

At the beginning of the third century in North Africa, persecution of Christians broke out in Carthage. One of the cate­chumens taken into custody was Perpetua, a noblewoman still nursing her son. Whe...

Have you noticed how difficult it is to remember someone’s name when you meet them? Within seconds of a person telling me his name, I’ve forgotten what he said. I may have even repeated it to myself. ...

Back in 1958, a baby boy was born into the Lane family. The father, a man named Robert, chose to name his boy Winner. How could the young man fell to succeed with a name like Winner Lane? Several yea...

What shall I say of the Romans themselves, who fortify their own empire with garrisons of their own legions, nor can extend the might of their kingdom beyond these nations? But Christ’s name is extend...

Have you noticed how difficult it is to remember someone’s name when you meet them? Within seconds of a person telling me his name, I’ve forgotten what he said. I may have even repeated it to myself. ...

If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. It is a ma...

These days, a common trick people use to remember someone they’ve just met is to save their first name along with the place where they met them—like “Matt PTA,” for example. I recently realized I stil...

Names in the ancient world were associated with identity, role and function. Consequently, naming is a typical part of the creation narratives. The Egyptian Memphite Theology identifies the Creator as...

There are no vowels in the Hebrew (YHWH), which makes it impossible to know exactly what the word is. Some old translations say ‘Jehovah’. Modern scholars tend to speak of ‘Yahweh’. When the word appe...

Two-thirds of the story of redemption is known to Christians as the Old Testament. Yet in the decades that I have been teaching Bible, I have found that most Christians, if allowed to answer honestly,...

When I ask the high school students at my church to name a celebrity, they can instantly rattle off a list of twenty. When I ask them to say who their heroes are, their response is usually quiet silen...

The marriage of Queen Victoria and Albert (otherwise known as Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel — quite a mouthful!) was one for the ages. Their love and devotion to each other was remarkable, ...

Becoming a teachable person has two prerequisites: There must be a teacher and a person willing to be taught. Increasingly, Western culture has become an environment that celebrates and platforms the ...

For millennia Jews have celebrated Passover to commemorate God’s rescue of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. Passover begins with the Seder, a ritual feast. In its liturgy is the Dayenu, which me...

Peter Greave (1910-1977) was a British national who endured a challenging and tumultuous life, which took a severe turn in 1939 when he contracted leprosy while stationed in India, also his birthplace...

If you are looking for a story that illustrates humanity's deep-seeded need for relationships, you could do far worse than the 2000 film, Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks. The protagonist, Chuck No...

In many parts of the world, on Epiphany, you will see a strange formula chalked above the doors of local homes. In 2024, it would read: 20 ✝  C ✝  M ✝  B ✝  24 The “chalking of the doors” is an ...

While the second example is a bit dated (Titanic is over approaching its third decade in circulation!) the logic holds and can be applied to a variety of films set in a historical context: I think of...