To this day, the Bjorn I knew for several hours in middle school remains the only one I’ve ever met. Another childhood friend—one with a similarly standard English-speaking boy name as mine—introduced me to the kid with a rat-tail hairdo and an unfamiliar name, which I (very unintentionally) botched.

But the mistake made my other friend laugh, and before long we were riffing off my mispronunciation of Bjorn’s name relentlessly. Mercilessly, I would soon learn. 

Bjorn spent more time with my friend’s mom than with us the rest of the day, and after Bjorn’s dad picked him up to go home she sat the two of us down in the living room. What she shared with us is why I’ve never forgotten the day, the face, the haircut…the name. “They’re not making fun of my name,” a tearful middle-school boy named Bjorn had told her, “they’re making fun of me.”

In my pre-teen boy’s head, this didn’t compute, as I recall mentally retorting, “Nope, it’s really just the name we’re making fun of.” Perhaps it was the pain of lived experience—as it so often is —that gave Bjorn the truer insight: that name and identity and self and being are intertwined.

What They Think of Her Name

I had gotten used to people gushing over my daughter’s name. “That’s beautiful,” “What does it mean” and other such variations of implicit compliment stirred my heart into excitement and pride as a parent—a feeling like I had more to discover about my own daughter’s gorgeous name as I saw her lexical identity’s significance coupled with its sonorous syllables washing over friends’, family’s and strangers’ comprehending expressions. 

Of course, we didn’t name her for them—and it was “we,” not I, who named her. In fact, her mother had far more to do with discovering the proper nouns that we would call the first and middle name of our firstborn daughter. And I relished in the sheer profundity of what, together, we were able to craft from vowels and consonants as a representation of our child’s very self. 

And, apparently, in how people felt about it, too.

Now, the second time around, I’m having to get used to a new set of comments. “That’s different;” “She’ll be the only one in her class with that name;” or, perhaps worst of all, the combination pun / unwanted commentary: “That is old.”  (You’ll get it before we’re done.)

Names are identities, and it’s only surprisingly recently that I’ve come to the realization that a person’s identity should never become a joke. Watching the kids with Fruits-of-the-Spirit names in Christian school enduring the “clever” wordplay of their peers and teachers should’ve taught me this long ago. 

Names are identities; an identity should never become a joke.

Our second daughter’s name is one that plays a bit of linguistic leapfrog: of Celtic origin with a German spelling and an Amero-anglicized pronunciation that none of the Internet agrees upon. But the visual beauty of its spelling hasn’t been disputed. And that last fact is fitting, seeing as how the forename’s (also disputed) meaning which my wife and I recognize is “One to be gazed upon.” 

Doubtless, you’re about to mentally pronounce Isolde differently than her mother and I intended. (I was actually quite pleased with the pediatric receptionist’s attempt of “Ih-zol-day?”—two out of three syllables wasn’t bad, I thought.) After landing on the name late in the second trimester, my wife and I took a few days for phonetic experimentation, seeking which sounding out of Isolde felt best on our tongues, teeth and lips—and hearts. And for all the factors we weighed (what’s the most traditional pronunciation? which one sounds prettiest? are we allowed to invent a pronunciation without precedent?) we simply found ourselves saying it one way more often than the others.

Like a nickname for a loved one that was never consciously chosen, my wife and I organically discovered the pronunciation that our home would use to welcome “ih-Zold” into the world. 

We Who Name as Named

In Genesis, God’s own act of creating is indistinguishable from the act of naming (“Let there be light” is God’s statement which both names and creates light as such). We humans are the pinnacle of a named creation, bearing the highest identity of all in God’s likeness. In naming our own offspring, then, we’re taking part in the most quintessential kind of creating. 

Perhaps that is one reason that sharing Isolde’s name with the world has been an unexpectedly vulnerable experience for me. I’ve never been one to seek an audience for what I consider my creative expressions—my poetry or my audio production. I’ve hidden almost all of my creative output for years, yet the names of my children are on immediate display for all the world. All of a sudden, people’s reactions to my child’s name become the roar of the audience I never sought casting either approval or disdain on my most intimate creative work. 

And it goes beyond that: their opinions aren’t received as an assessment of me as an artist only, but of my quality as a parent as well (“If they don’t think the name is beautiful,” I find my thoughts saying, “then they don’t think I’m providing well for my daughter.”) I’ve known for years of my struggle with over-valuing the approval of others for a sense of security; to see it turn up here surprised me.

How much do I care what kind of a parent other people think I am? How much should I let it matter what people think of my creativity?

Both of those questions matter more to the present conversation than diagnosing a simple parental self-consciousness; ultimately, what does it mean (and not mean) to give a name? To be a named creation?

Poems are meant to be heard; names are meant to be spoken. But it is not in the assessment of the audience in which the work’s value lies.

Concerning the role of an “audience” for creative expressions: this blog itself is the result of a conviction that art is only half-realized when it’s kept to the artist alone. Therefore, I believe that it at least matters that other people be able to think something of an artist’s creativity. Art is made to be shared, but anything that is shared can’t belong exclusively to one person anymore. To create is to share, and to share is to be vulnerable. This goes for a poem as much as for the name of a baby girl. 

And maybe there’s a parallel between the creative individual entrusting their heart to an audience by their work and a parent sharing the name of a child with the outside world. Poems are meant to be heard; names are meant to be spoken. But in both cases, it is not in the assessment of the audience in which the work’s value lies. The real beauty of a name can go unappreciated the same as for a poem; that doesn’t change its real beauty. 

Indeed, this real beauty—the delight Isolde’s mother and I take in her name—is why she has her name in the first place. There is a joy I feel hearing the name we gave her on others’ lips. The sensation of speaking her name myself feels right. Isolde becomes the princess name that it is anytime I hear it spoken by her mother. Yes, what our daughter’s name is to us matters more than what it seems to be to anyone else. 

Someday, Isolde herself will form feelings about her name—feelings of insecurity? confidence? confusion?—and even she to whom the name was given will be part of the audience receiving that name. Even her deeply valid opinions about her own name won’t supersede what her mother and I gave her in that name. 

The Naming That is Existence

A name isn’t the sound you respond to: it is you—a word that stands for the poem that is your life.

The created order of parents naming children reflects the givenness of life: we are given entry into this existence entirely upon terms of which we have no choice. At the beginning, we choose nothing about what we are, including our name. It must be that in His design, God has entrusted His children who are parents to nurture his children who are infants, for better and for worse (no “or” about it). 

The first privilege the parent exercises may be one of the only which remains long after parent and child are gone: the names parents give to their babies start on the birth certificate and end up on the family tree. Names in a family gather and spill down through the years, a river of the history in which each member finds themselves a part. 

And even though this privilege begins with the parent, the course which that name takes in the life of its holder may not be what the name-giver imagined. It’s probably rare that a child lives into the full meaning their parents had in mind for their name (if they even had one in mind).

But I also suspect it’s a very rare thing that a child does not grow to discover their own meaning for their name. The name that was given by parents at birth will come to mean to that child something utterly unique and untransferrable: their identity itself. 

A name isn’t the sound you respond to: it is you—a word that stands for the poem that is your life. Regardless of what others have said about your name, it was given to you by someone who knew it was beautiful. 

Regardless of what your name has meant to anyone else, it will mean “Me” only for you. 

Regardless of how you feel about your existence, God knows every one of His stanzas is sublime. God is not a self-conscious creator; the name of your life will speak the poetry of His love for you without fail and without regard for anyone else’s interpretation.

How much everyone (or anyone) likes a kid’s name doesn’t say anything about the quality of the parent: how much the child can know that they have been meaningfully chosen to be deeply loved does. That they can know their name means—before anything else—“beloved.” 

Exactly what the “name” of existence itself means in the first place.