This afternoon I received a letter in which my sister-in-law’s grandma asked me to call her “Nana.” In an instant our relationship moved from the formality of a “Mrs. So-and-So relationship” to one more closely mirroring that of a grandmother and her grandchild. Names are so much more than just a way to distinguish one person from another, as we might distinguish juice from milk, but they say something about the relationship between the speaker and the one who carries the name.
We see this in a myriad of ways. While I love the fact that my dad calls me, “Pumpkin-Pumpkin,” I would feel uncomfortable if a professor were to address me in such a manner. Our relationship does not warrant such familiarity. Or even if a close friend, someone with whom I’m very familiar, called me “Pumpkin-Pumpkin” it would still be strange because that is not part of our relationship. A number of my friend’s moms have become mother-like figures to me, and therefore I refer to them as such when I warmly greet them. When a child finds an animal, or even an inanimate possession that they cannot keep, we do everything in our power to keep them from naming it because then they will become “attached.” In the naming, a relationship is born, or at least taken to a new level.
In the play Eurydice, by Sarah Ruhl, Eurydice dies and is taken to the underworld. In entering the underworld, her memory is wiped and she therefore forgets the names of everyone she once knew, thus erasing those relationships. She meets her father in the underworld, but it isn’t until she can begin to relearn names that she rediscovers her relationships with him and those she has left behind. At one point, Eurydice asks her father to tell her the names of her mother and brothers, but he refuses her, telling her it will make her too sad. As it stands, she is not in relationship with her nameless family members, but merely knows of their relationship. Without the names the relationships cannot exist to the same degree.
My uncle’s mother passed away today. As I thought about the joyous reunion Jesus and Sharon must be having, I began to wonder what God calls us. Does he call us by our proper names? Do you think he has nicknames for us? What would happen if I heard God say my name?
There isn’t really a conclusion to this. In fact, this is quite rambling and lacking direction. But today I suddenly became aware of the intimate links between name and relationship, and it fascinated me.
