In class, I often offer my students a seemingly simple exercise. I ask them to think about their name, remember the nicknames they were called in the family, reflect on the history of their name and what it meant to their parents. I ask how they felt about their name as children and how that attitude has changed over time.
Surprisingly, this exercise often evokes emotions that are closer in color to the bitterness of loss than to the joy of gain. So, the girl, who was called Alyonushka at home, feels that her name is “childish” — it does not allow her to grow up and gain independence. Twenty-three-year-old Vera knows that by naming her by this name, her parents expressed hope for the strength of their relationship. The parental marriage fell apart, and today Vera feels that she has not coped with the responsibility entrusted to her.
The young man, whom his parents awarded with a rare, exotic name, feels resentment: he is convinced that they were driven by vanity, but they did not think about the future of their son.
NAMED PARENT ASSOCIATIONS GIVE US ONLY THE FIRST IMPACT TO DEVELOPMENT.
In other words, there is more to the name than meets the eye. Through it we find ourselves, but it also constrains us, drives us into certain limits. In ancient times, there was a custom: when parting, friends cut a coin or a tablet with an inscription in half and took the halves with them. Many years later, they got to know each other, making sure that both parts fit together and form a single whole. The name itself is one of these halves, and the second is conscious and unconscious parental desires, cultural associations and the consequences of various processes in society. Achieving a perfect match between them is not easy, if not impossible.
And is it really necessary to strive for it? The name is not one-dimensional — its content is always voluminous. We need it as one of the first methods of self-identification — a process that underlies the development of personality and allows the child to gain inner strength, learn to empathize and compassion, form habits and skills. At the same time, with age, the methods of identification change, and the name in this vein gives us only the primary impetus for development. And how we manage this initial energy depends only on us. In this sense, names are like notes: their number is limited, but the variety of music created from them has no limits.