The Meaning of a Name

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 vanity of public relations. The meaning of a name is not in the dictionary, not in the unconscious, not in the size of the lettering. It is in relationship—with God. It was the Jeremiah “to whom the word of the LORD came” who realized his authentic and eternal being. Naming is a way of hoping. We name a child after someone or some quality that we hope he or she will become—a saint, a hero, an admired ancestor.

Some parents name their children trivially after movie stars and millionaires. Harmless? Cute? But we do have a way of taking on the identities that are prescribed for us. Millions live out the superficial sham of the entertainer and the greedy exploitiveness of the millionaire because, in part, significant people in their lives cast them in a role or fantasized an illusion and failed to hope a human future for them.

When I take an infant into my arms at the baptismal font and ask the parents, “What is the Christian name of this child?” I am not only asking, “Who is this child I am holding?” but also, “What do you want this child to become? What are your visions for this life?” George Herbert knew the evocative power of naming when he instructed his fellow pastors in sixteenth-century England that at baptism they “admit no vain or idle names.