What's in a name?
When I moved to Northern Ireland from Scotland 20 years ago I was not prepared for the stress I would feel on encountering so many names I'd never heard before. Worse than that, names I had not the foggiest idea how to pronounce. Working with small children over the past two decades Ive met lot of Cairrai's and Saoirse's and Eoin's and Fiadh's as well as children who have ' ordinary names' spelled in unusual ways ( Aimee, Hollie, Robyn, Darragh etc) It is very very disconcerting indeed to look at a child's name badge and not know how to pronounce their name. Or to be writing out a name and have a parent correct your spelling of it. Our names are something so fundamental to our very existence - we all have one, we all have an opinion about the one we have, we all feel the weight of responsibility in naming our children or pets or even our houses. Names are important. They are our very first point of contact with people.
Right back at the very start God made the world. He made Adam and set him in the garden. Interestingly, He didnt look at Adam and say ' Ach poor wee man, he's all on his ownesome - lets get him a wee wifey right away'. Nope. Even though Adam was alone, and God knew it wasnt good for man to be alone, God didnt sort out a mate for him right away. There was something more important to attend to first. Names.
Genesis 2 :19 is one very short verse. But it describes Adam naming every single living creature God had made! How did that work then? Presumably Adam didnt say ' we shall call this one ' big thing that flies' and this one ' white thing that flies' and that one 'small thing that flies'. Adam had to find names for millions of creatures. How long did that take? We skip over the verse in a second but Adam must have taken days, weeks, months, to name all of God's creation - and all this on his own, before he got his mate. I reckon by the time he had finished he probably never wanted to see another bird or creepy crawly again! And he had definitely earned his deep sleep 😃 God never does anything randomly, for no reason. So why did he get Adam to name everything? What is so important about names?
The spiritual significance of being named.
Its worth noting a couple of things here. 1) in Bible times people named their children according to the character and qualities they believed they had or aspired to have. Names also gave information about the family and place someone belonged to. So a name gave alot more information about someone than our names do in our western culture. But more than this, the naming of someone after a certain quality or characteristic was a statement of faith and a ' calling into being' of that characteristic. Given that someone's name is used daily throughout their lifetime and that there is spiritual power in the words we speak, the blessing ( or occasionally in the Old Testament the curse) which is associated with someones name is significant. When we speak the name of Jesus we are declaring the meaning of that name - God saves - a truth which makes the enemy tremble and puts demons to flight. 2) In Hebrew every letter and punctuation mark has a meaning in and of itself. Im not a Hebrew scholar so I cant pretend to understand all the implications of this, I just know that God doesnt waste a comma or do anything by accident. So the names we come across in the Bible are worth exploring and investigating. They probably hold much more information than we understand on first glance. 3) Giving something a name gives us a level of authority over it - because we are declaring something about that person or thing which we desire for them/it. God didnt name all the creatures He'd created. He wanted Adam to do that so that Adam, who was to have dominion over them, could have a say in what each creature would be like. ( Im not sure Im explaining it very well but I hope you get what Im trying to say here)
God names Himself. Nobody has authority over God. The Jews consider the name of God to be so holy that they can't say or write it. I AM. The God who was, who is, who is to come. Im pretty sure that mere words cant start to encapsulate even a part of who God is and so to give Himself a name in some ways limits Him to a language and a vocabulary. But its the best we can do for now. And God knows we need a frame of reference. So He tells us that He is eternal, over our past, our present and our future. He then names His attributes ( healer, peace, redeemer, provider etc etc) to show us more of His character. But His most significant name is the one we think about on the approach to Christmas. Immanuel. God With Us.
If ever a name was significant, prophetic, important, that's it. Emmanuel. The word made flesh.
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