The Power of Name

by Marilyn Moore 

 Every teacher knows the power of being able to call a student by name. Teachers pore over class lists the days before the first day of school, becoming familiar with names, looking for names they might recognize from some other context, noting those names with which they may need help in pronunciation. They are preparing for that first day, when the challenge of attaching a name to a face begins, and then the deeper challenge of connecting name to face to voice to the unique qualities of the student. It starts with name, and at the point the teacher can greet the student by name, the relationship begins…. Knowing each student’s name, every student’s name, makes everything work better. Discussion is better, organizing is better, motivating is better, class culture is better, feedback is better…and it all starts with a name. 

It’s true for adults, too. Just as five-year-olds and thirteen-year-olds want to be known by their name, so do people beginning a new job, a new book group, a new team, a new neighborhood. Astute employers, managers, leaders, and members of a community know the importance of name, and they get to know people by name, and they have all kinds of brain tricks to remember names. In some way, we know that to be known by our name is to be known beyond label of age, or gender, or occupation. 

Names are part of custom, culture, and tradition. In the majority culture in this country, we generally have a family name, which is placed last, and a given name, or two or three given names, placed first. That is not true world wide, and one of the wonderful puzzles of traveling to other countries, or in welcoming children from immigrant and refugee families, is figuring out how names are ordered…which part of the name is the family name, and is the family name from the mother’s or father’s side of the family. And for everyone, is there a story in the name…a family tradition, a family friend, the popular name of the time, a compromise that had to be made between parents who just couldn’t land on a name that both adored, or some other story? Is the given name the preferred name, or is there a nickname? If the given name can be shortened, Elizabeth to Betsy, Edward to Ed, is it? Does the person prefer it? 

There are times in life when a person’s name is especially important. Graduates and their families want to hear their name called as they cross the stage to receive a diploma. In Christian christening and baptism ceremonies, a name is given and blessed. Jewish babies receive their Hebrew name in a naming ceremony. In some Native American cultures, a name given at birth may change as the child or adult grows into a new name. Vows and oaths include the name; we own our name when we make a promise. And at death, the name is said, with fondness, with sorrow, with an intent to hold onto the spirit of the person by remembering, and saying, their name. 

This was especially evident in the response to last week’s 5 Women Mayhem blog by Mary Kay Roth, in which she wrote about her brother Doug, who died by suicide. Hundreds of people read that blog, and dozens responded with “His name is…” saying the name of the person in their lives who also died by suicide and who was not forgotten, who must be named. Each year at the memorial service for those who died in the terrorist attacks on September 11, the names of the victims are read. Each year on All Saints Sunday, the names of the persons in our church who have died the previous year are said aloud. The names of the victims of the Vietnam war are etched in marble at the Viet Nam War Memorial in Washington D.C.; it is an achingly somber and spiritual place, more than 58,000 names to be found, and touched, and remembered. 

There have been times, too many times, when names have been deliberately and cruelly dishonored. Native American children, forcibly sent to white boarding schools, were required to stop using the name given to them at birth and instead be called by a more “American-sounding” name. Immigrants from eastern European countries in the late 1800’s routinely received papers as they arrived in the US with their names “Americanized.” Enslaved persons were stripped of their names, and their children’s names were changed at the whim of an owner or overseer. Jewish people sent to concentration camps were known by number, not by name. And the names of children, separated from their parents at the southern border of the US, were not kept in a system that could reunite them with their parents. In each of these circumstances, and in many others around the world and across millennia, the loss of name is accompanied by, or caused by, loss of identity and loss of dignity. 

It has become customary, and what a god-awful statement it is that such a custom must even need to exist, that the names of victims of mass shootings, or police violence, are noted in news reports. The names are spoken aloud, the names are remembered, and the names recall the lives taken in violence. It is as if we acknowledge that as a society we are unable to prevent death by mass violence, but we attempt to give honor by naming the name. And to a grieving parent, or spouse, or child, it is hoped there is some solace and comfort in hearing their loved one’s name…. 

At all ages and stages of life, at life’s high points of celebration and at moments of great tragedy and sadness, we are reminded to “Say their name,” because we know that calling someone by name begins, and sustains, a relationship, an identity, a recognition of the inherent value of the person who bears that name.

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