Home | Articles

 

An understanding of the meaning of names is something a person should cultivate if they want to have a stronger understanding of themselves and the culture they were born into. A name is more than just a signifier of who you happen to be amongst your family. Names are the things that link us to the history of our families, through a shared inheritance of conflicting personal stories, stamps of character and personality and common place in the world at large in terms of ethnic recognition and identity. Some names are given to keep the memories of the dearly departed alive in the form of the next generation which shows just how much of us is attached to the name we are given. Furthermore scientist have found that animals of high intelligence like dolphins use sounds for naming individuals in a group over the course of a lifetime.

The meaning of names in an historical sense is best represented in the forms they took during the creation the legend of King Arthur and his knights. The name of a knight was literally a part of the honour and the chivalry that gave them their reputation for strength and purity throughout the kingdom and as such when children are taught these myths the personality and deeds of each them is attached to the given name. So when a knight fell in battle to another knight he was obligated to give up his name, which the winner would add to a list of his own vanquished expanding his influence, as he becomes the person who conquered another personally and several others by proxy. Names conveyed strength and honour in other ways because knight who fell to a powerful knight with a grand reputation felt no dishonour while a strong knight defeated by an unknown was shamed and humbled. In the popular biblical mythology of the Old Testament the meaning of names carried divine importance, even in the case of the first man Adam whose name actually comes from the Hebrew word for earth, tying him back to the fact that he was originally formed form the land.

There are even more representations of the meaning of names are found in later biblical stories for example the patriarch Abram and Sarai his wife were renamed Sarah and Abraham when they discovered they would be the mother and father of a nation of the chosen. Later Simon was renamed Peter when the keys of heaven were delivered to him showing that in these stories altering a name was complete and utter recreation of the self that would draw a person closer to their true propose in the biblical community. For people whole live religious lives they are given a new on important religious events such as a christening, and this is why under estimating the importance of a representation in a name.

In other examples of the importance of the meaning of names the family name has legal implications as well as connections to the history of a family. Often called the surname in western cultures in the past these names represented legitimacy. Considering all of this you can see why an attachment to a name should never be understated.