What's In a Name?

Growing up, my mother always expected me to remember people's names. This was not because she found it polite or because she thought it a character honing habit, but simply because she could never remember names herself. Sadly, this is a carrying gene and I find that I exhibit this family characteristic quite well, therefore, in those most desperate of moments, arm held tight by my mother as she whispered intensely yet inconspicuously into my ear that oh so familiar phrase, "what is that person's name?" I always drew a blank. Of course, not knowing someones name was of no consequence to me, I was just a child.

Names were never anything of real consequence for the majority of my life as I think about it. I lived in the same house my entire life, went to the same school, had the same friends my entire upbringing. I never really had to remember new names because I never really met anyone new. Of course, there was those occasions when I would happen upon that new individual, but the practice of meeting an individual only constitutes remembering one individual name and anyone can do that. Throw one new person into someone's life every couple of years and sure, they'll get the names straight.

On top of all this, I have one of those names that has multiple forms: Steven, or is it Steve, "ph" or "ev?" Therefore, in the confusion of all that, I really began care less about even my own name as well. Steve was always fine with me, it was easier to say, quicker to spell and as I came to find out, if I introduced myself as "Steve" this immediately eradicated any confusion as to the spelling of the name. Apparently it's taboo to call some one who's name is spelled: S-T-E-P-H-E-N, "Steve." Perhaps it's the biblical undertones that form carries.

To make matters worse, my friends adopted the practice of only calling me "Steven" when they were angry with me. Now I found myself with not only confusing, but negative associations dealing with names as well. Also, "Steven" apparently means, crowned one or something along those lines. Of course, then there is my second name, "Jacob," which means deceiver. Added together I am the crowned deceiver. I find myself, if wanting to be a true stickler about name significance, nothing more than the leader of some obscure, un-named hoard of bandits running around duping people. At least, that's the picture I always got.

Then college came. I went far away for college, so far that I knew no person upon entering the campus. This meant that everyone I "met" signified another name I was supposed to learn. I think at first I really didn't think about it. I would meet someone, hear their name and forget it. It was really no big deal. Most of the people one meets at college the first couple days are never spoken to or of again, so I had nothing to lose. My floor, however, became more complicated. I learned my roommates name easy enough, so that was taken care of and everyone else I figured I would just leave up to time to take care of.

This worked out for the most part. I learned everyone's name eventually, except for one. I tell people this from time to time as an aside, but have never written about it and have never told the individual involved about it either. Not that it's some horrible secret, I just haven't gotten around to telling him yet. I got very close to this individual during our first semester of college and I don't know how it happened, perhaps I just never had the need for his name, but I went almost the entirety of that semester without knowing this person's name, and we were close. We had deep deep conversations together, we prayed, played jokes on people...never knew his name.

One comes to a point in a relationship when it's just too late to ask. I guess the momentum of everything was just too fast. I forgot his name initially, didn't have to use it or ask for it the next couple of times hanging out and that was that I suppose. You just can't look at someone one day whom you truly know, who you've laughed and cried with and ask that question, "by the way, what was your name again." I believe that falls into a category beneath the nameless one night stand. I forget how I finally did learn his name, I guess it really doesn't matter at this point. LONNIE and I are still friends to this day.

I encountered something else while at college as well, that being those who took name forgetting personally. There were a few individuals, whose names I cannot remember, who would get downright hurt and pissey when I would not remember their names. I usually wrote them off as high maintenance and tried to keep my distance. There was also a few people who became name accountability partners with me. These people understood what it was like to not be able to remember names, therefore, we agreed to, whenever we saw each other, point at each other and say our own name. I would see them in the hall, and upon eye contact would shoot my arm and hand out into a defined point and belt out, "Steven." This worked great, but then I saw very little of those people as we realized that our only connection was that we didn't know each others name, and that's normally reason enough not to talk to someone, so that was short lived.

What's in a name these days anyways? As I danced around earlier, I never had much preference as to what people called me, "Steven" or "Steve." However, I came to find later that my mother took offense to people calling me "Steve." At first I blew this off, I mean, it's my name, I would think. As time went on, however, I began to think more about what it is to name someone, and the fact that many people, myself included, have been named after someone. I decided that it was truly important that people call me what my mother felt I should be called. She is the one who named me, she put the thought into it, she knew and had the connection with the other man who carried my name before it was applied to me. I wanted to reclaim the association to someone she had created for herself at my beginning.

These days, especially within internet culture, names are empty at best, deceiving at worst and every explanation that falls in between. Between chat rooms, blogs such as this, and e-mail, people have applied and given themselves, at times, multiple names and explanations. I find this strange. Naming is not something that should be self-applied or in the hands of the beholder. We as individuals are positively biased toward ourselves and, therefore, unfit to pick names for ourselves.

When we apply our own names it releases us from a certain amount of accountability and honesty we need to maintain civil contact. It allows us to judge ourselves by our own standards, thereby remembering or forgetting whatever we want. Names used to have something to do with what someone was truly like, or reflective of the tone of the times they were born in or even, as mine is, reminiscent of another, who someone found amazing and saw a way to, to some extent, preserve their memory and legacy.

In my case, this has the potential to impose upon myself a modest level of accountability. In the case of the other naming practices, these should instill some motivation to wisdom because of the memories produced by the mere mention of one's name. However, people are not named as such anymore. This lack of meaning used to be my argument when I would hurt someones feelings for not knowing their name. However, now, as I have learned from my mother's concern over my name, names mean something to someone and they're not to be written off or even disliked.

There is a level to names that allows them to just be. They are because they are in this generation. May we find at least enough weight in our own names to be accountable to others and enough honesty to ourselves to divulge our true names to those we interact with. May we also take the extra step to remember those names who others have so graciously made known to us.