The Name Game

When I noticed the clerk helping me at the grocery store was very pregnant, I asked her if she’d picked out names for her baby. I had “baby names” on my mind after reading about 1924 Olympic gold-medal-runner Eric Liddell. When his second girl came along, he wanted “Heather.” His wife wanted another name. He told her since they couldn’t decide, they’d put both names in the hat and pull out one. When she pulled out “Heather,” she was of course disappointed. Then she noticed the twinkle in his eye and he began laughing. He admitted that he wrote “Heather” on both slips of paper. She joined in the laughter and let him win.

Anyway, the grocery clerk said she planned to name her baby girl “Grayson Marie.” I remarked that it had a nice sound to it. But when I got home, the name “Grayson” just didn’t seem right. I checked my baby name book (I keep one on hand for naming fiction characters in my writing) and couldn’t find it under girl names. I checked boy names, and there it was. It means….drum roll….jailer’s son. Oh, my.

A couple days later I was reading in Daniel, about how this young cream-of-the-crop teen from Israel was marched off to Babylon and pulled into the king’s service. Today he’d be the teen who scored perfect SATs, was named all-American in two sports, and was an in-demand concert pianist. Daniel, while outstanding, had one problem: he had a Hebrew name that meant “God is my judge.” The Babylonian king tried to change Daniel’s identify by renaming him “Belteshazzar,” which means “Bel (one of the Babylonian false gods), protect his life.”

The Babylonians weren’t the only culture to tamper with names. Our entertainment and sports industry probably is most notorious for changing “professional” names. The front of my baby name book gives some of them: Woody Allen (Allen Konigsberg), Yogi Berra (Lawrence Peter Berra), George Burns (Nathan Birnbaum), Tony Curtis (Bernard Schwartz), Judy Garland (Frances Gumm), Cary Grant (Archibald Leach), Bob Hope (Leslie Townes Hope), Rock Hudson (Roy Scherer Jr.), Michael Landon (Michael Orowitz), Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jean Baker), Roy Rogers (Leonard Slye), Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey), and John Wayne (Marion Michael Morrison).

Back on Belteshazzar, er, Daniel, I’ve been giving second thoughts to something I read recently in Revelation. In the letter to the church in Philadelphia, known for its endurance and love in tough times, God promises that the believers will get “a new name” (Rev. 3:12). I believe this means we will have full identification with God, something like our ancestors did in adding “son” to surnames. Ander’s son was “Anderson” and John’s son was “Johnson.” And yes, the gray (jailer’s) son was Grayson. We’ll still be ourselves, but we’ll have that wonderful, positive, hopeful, clarifying identification as God’s-son or God’s-daughter.

Now that is something to look forward to!