This may be a hot take – but have you ever thought about what life would be like if we didn’t have names?
I went on a weekend retreat recently, and I looked around the room filled with approximately 50 people surrounding me and I realized, I don’t know most of these people’s names… and that freaked me out.
Now before you think I’m having an existential crisis, stop and think for a moment, what would we do if we didn’t have names? Nobody would be able to create a will, it would be impossible to communicate, and we would probably have to rely on physical appearances or descriptions I suppose. I can’t help but think about how hard it would be to get someone’s attention. Would we say, “Hey you with the blonde hair and blue jeans!” or would we be assigned numbers to identify one another?
But seriously, names are actually such a core aspect of our identities. For some, our name is the thing that makes us unique, maybe it has a special meaning, or it’s one that hasn’t been heard very often.
For others, our name can be what makes us a part of something, a family, history, or culture. From the day we are born, this is our identifier, it’s the thing we write on all our documents, the thing we respond to, and typically the first fact we present about ourselves.
“Hi, my name is Elizabeth.”
There’s a reason why people get offended when they are called the wrong name. Or why we find it so funny when our Starbucks barista spells our name with ten z’s and a ‘q’ where there should have NEVER been one.
I read a blog by Kyla Scanlon titled “A Rose by Any Other Name: The Importance of Our Names in Shaping Identity” in which she wrote about her experience with her peers mispronouncing her name. In her article Kyla explained that she made a pact growing up where if someone mispronounced her name she wouldn’t be friends with them. Which at first I thought was a little extreme, but as I continued reading, I got it. At the end of her blog, she said,
“Calling it a daffodil doesn’t diminish the inherent power of the rose, but it does diminish what the rose feels about being a rose. Take great care in pronouncing the rose’s name correctly. No one likes being called the wrong thing.” – Kyla Scanlon
From personal experience, I grew up with the nickname “Bizzy” and this nickname became a huge identifier for me. I went by this name all throughout my childhood, from middle school to high school. If you don’t believe me, you can ask me to show you my grade nine school ID – Bizzy Mason.
Getting older now though and moving into a professional atmosphere of jobs and University, if someone I don’t know or I’m not used to hearing it from, calls me this nickname, I get a little irritated. Why? Because this name feels like a part of my adolescence, not so much my current older self. Even now at 20 years old, there are still a select number of people from home who call me by this name, but that’s okay because they know that I find it sweet, just from the right person.
Thinking about this though made me realize how important our names are to our identities and how endearing it can be to have it be used properly. When it comes to your name being mispronounced, it can be awkward to correct people, but your name is your name. It is something that nobody can deny you own.
Rock your name – you own it!
I think for most of us when we were younger, our parents would use our names to call us, to tell us to stop doing something, or to listen to them. It definitely grabs our attention when our names are used, because our brains associate it with someone focusing on us.
Have you ever received a text from somebody and the only thing they say is your name? We all know that feeling of “Oh gosh what did I do” and your heart drops into the pit of your stomach until they finally tell you, it’s such an uneasy feeling.
However, I find when someone says my name during a conversation, I am immediately more engaged. For me at least, there is a huge difference when I am approached by somebody, and they say “Hi Elizabeth!” as opposed to just saying “hi.”
I remember reading somewhere that “a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language,” which is so true. Because my name is so important to me, it feels like I am being acknowledged, and valued. When using a person’s name with a positive tone in a conversation, it usually instills a feeling of importance you have towards them. Obviously don’t do it to somebody too many times, because that may come off as kinda creepy and manipulative, but as a general practice when done with sincerity and genuinely, it’s impactful. Give it a try sometime.
Something my dad does that I think is really admirable and special is that whenever we go out to a restaurant he asks the waiter or waitress what their name is, and then thanks them with their name like, “Thank you Janice!” Every time he does this the waiter/waitress gets this sparkle in their eyes as if nobody has asked them what their name was before. Since I’ve noticed him doing this, I have started to make an effort of acknowledging customer service workers names’, and I think it makes all the difference.
I just can’t imagine a world where we don’t have names. We all have one, every single thing on this planet, person, animal, object, EVERYTHING is named.
I don’t know about you, but I think after all my reflection on the importance of our names, I am going to make a much more considerate effort to get to know the names of the people around me, and maybe even ask them:
“What does your name mean to you?”