Given Names

 

     My older brother and I enjoyed during elementary school a fraternal rivalry. We would compete in shooting baskets, in wrestling, in Monopoly and cribbage, and in verbal games as well.  In disputations about who possessed the more prestigious given name, I would argue that James was, as everyone knew, the most typical butler’s name after Jeeves, whereas William was the name of the much-praised Shakespeare.  He would respond that Billy was notoriously most appropriate for goats, but his trump card was the fact that the Bible was named after King James.  What reply was possible? 

     We operated on the archaic assumption that, as Origen said, names are not arbitrary or meaningless, but rather are significant (nomina sunt omina).  Some of my students in Nigeria had English given names chosen to increase their chances of prosperity either in a very general way (such as Moneymaker, Famous, and Goodluck) or more narrowly (College, Engineer, and Editor).  Yet once all our names were sprechende Namen. 

     My own first name has typically martial Germanic roots, deriving from the words for “will” or “willing” and helmet, hence meaning “resolute protector.”  The representation of strength, even ferocity, in personal names often made use of animals like those on heraldic coats of arms, reminiscent of totemic beasts, such as in Eberhard (”strong boar,” paralleled in Old English Wilbur, “wild boar”), Bernard (“strong bear”), and Leonard (“strong lion,” the Norse Bjorn simply means “bear”). 

     On the other hand Hebrew names are primarily religious such as Michael ) ”resembling God”), Raphael (“God has healed”), and Jonathan (“Yahweh has given”).  Muslim names tend similarly toward piety: Mohammed, of course, (now, I read, the most common male name for babies born in the U. K.), while Hassan, Omar, and Ali, are all names of associates or followers of the Prophet, though each, of course, has an etymological meaning as well. 

     Hindu names, often selected with the advice of astrologer, conform to the same patterns.  Some are simply desirable qualities such as Sunita (“good” or “virtuous”) or Vijay (“victory” or “success”), while others may be names of deities (Ram, Lakshmi, Krishna), and others yet might be figures from history or legend, such Sita from the Ramayana or Ashok, the last Maurya emperor

     In most of Western Europe [1] the given name precedes the surname or family name.  Traditionally called a Christian name and conferred only at baptism or christening, in Europe it was almost always chosen from names on the calendar of saints, thus indicating not only identity but spiritual aspiration as well.  For this reason many priests insisted that a child’s name be chosen either from the Bible or the calendar of saints, but in fact it was not until 1983 that the proliferation of unconventional names caused a revision of canon law specifically forbidding names “foreign to a Christian morality.”  Yet I know of an earlier case in which priest refused to christen a girl Sybil, calling her Teresa instead, though she used Sybil all her life.

     Though the given name was to be religious in Christian Europe, the name Jesus itself was avoided everywhere except on the Iberian Peninsula (whence it traveled to Latin America).  Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the popularity of the name in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries while it was little-used elsewhere: the celebration of the Feast of the Holy Name encouraged by the mendicant orders, or the use of the name for abandoned orphans and by newly converted men who had been named Mohammed.  As recently as 1998 a legal decision was necessary for Jesus to be entered on official records as an individual’s given name in Germany. 

     Traditionally in Europe people have celebrated their saint’s day in a way similar to American birthday parties, though, though, for the pious European, a mass or an offering might be included in the day’s activities.  This practice, often combined with observance of the actual birthday, emphasizes the significance of the saint whose name one bears as well as doubling one’s occasions for self-celebration.. 

     Puritans, determined to display their faith as prominently as possible, sometimes chose novel given names; the most well-known is the seventeenth century preacher Praise-God Barebone (whose brother was Fear-God). [2]  Others included Die-Well, Sorry-for-sin, Repentance, Kill-sin, Joy-againe, From-above, Hope-full, and Faith-my-joy.  It was as though they had stepped out of the pages of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. 

     The willingness to confer such improbable names enjoyed a bit of a renaissance among the less puritanical during the counter-culture youth movement of the late sixties.  One of the era’s icons, the inimitable Way Gravy and his wife, named their son Howdy Do-Good Gravy Tomahawk Truckstop Romney after he was born in the Tomahawk Truckstop in Boulder.  (He later decided he would prefer to go by Jordan.)  I recall, among people of my own acquaintance in the Haight-Ashbury, little ones named Wheatberry, Midnight, Ecstasy, and Winterlude.  Some well-known figures participated in the trend with Abbie Hofmann and his wife Anita naming their child america (lower case), but doubtless the celebrity with the most freewheeling and innovative children’s names was Frank Zappa (whose own name, though it looks like it might be invented, perhaps as a play on Zap comix, is his parents’) whose children were Dweezil, Moon Unit, Diva, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan, and Thin Muffin Pigeen.

    Our own identification with our names must be, though, a pale reflection of the feeling of our species through most of its history.  Quite commonly people have kept a personal name secret to prevent attacks by magicians.  According to Frazer [3] this practice is not only common across the globe from Australian and American aborigines, but also among what he calls “Esquimaux,” people from Chile, Indonesia, Hindus, and ancient Egyptians.  The anxiety surrounding personal names may take many forms: sometimes the name’s bearer cannot mention it, but anyone else can, sometimes the prohibition is limited in time.  Some people have veritable layers of names, each concealing a more intimate and powerful one.

     The ethnic connotations of names can be subtle.  Does Laurence carry some faint French perfume as opposed to Lawrence?  Geoffrey surely sounds just a bit British next to Jeffrey.  Such hints are of course, arbitrary and misleading, utterly without logical justification, yet they linger in our minds.  Otto must surely, it might seem, be more portly than Étienne, and Fabio more fun-loving than Olaf. 

     Ethnic cues may lead to altogether mistaken assumptions.  One might think that someone named Percy is either a British aristocrat or a Jamaican, but in fact the name is most popular today in Peru.  One expects Brunhild to be a Valkyrie, yet Brunilda’s Cuchifritos is a small café near me owned by a Puerto Rican woman.  In Guatemala I encountered a tour guide named Ivan, and I know a child with four Orthodox Jewish grandparents named Bronwen.  

     The fact that people wish sometimes to change their given names is further testimony to the power they retain even for moderns.  European converts to a Hindu or Buddhist guru or to Islam may wish to change their names, while immigrants from Thailand or China may adopt an English name if they live in the United States.  Actors, writers, and telephone salespeople often choose professional names, while prison inmates, hobos, and hikers on the Appalachian Trail devise sobriquets.  

     Adam is said in Genesis to have named the animals and mothers and fathers are able to exercise a similar power in giving names to their offspring.  Feeling the responsibility of this choice, parents often deliberate at length and consider many possibilities before settling on one.  Though we no longer consciously accept the principle of magic that claims that words can influence reality, we remain wary of their power.  No name can satisfactorily express an individual personality, but we seek to provide each infant with the best odds, unimpeded, if not aided, by an auspicious given name.  My own has served satisfactorily, though, after a thousand years of popularity, “plain old Bill” has become a set phrase, to me an acceptable one, expressing familiar comfort like worn old slippers.

 

 

1.  In Hungary the family name comes first. 

2.  The most elaborate Puritan name of all, “Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned” is variously said to be Praise-God's baptismal name, his brother's name, or the name of his son, commonly called Nicholas. 

3.  The Golden Bough, 284-289 and elsewhere.