What’s in a name?

A recent discussion with friends at breakfast got me to thinking. Why do we use nicknames?

One of the couples said they are calling their baby daughter by her name only. They don’t believe in pet names for whatever reason. I, on the other hand, use pet names to express a closeness and contextuality.

For instance, my husband is Andreas to the rest of the world. I only call him that, thereby lumping me together with said world, when I’m either mad or other people are within earshot. Otherwise,  I have an array of names to express the situation. The same applies to him. I always know he’s about to ask me something a tad tenuous when he addresses me with ‘Babu’ ~when he had a business trip to Malta, for example, he called me that (I ended up tagging along! )

My kids have a variety of nicknames as well. To protect the innocent, I won’t, well, name them here.

Words have great power and how we choose to use them makes a difference. Just looking at all the names for God gives us pause to think about the meaning of names.

I always know when I let someone into my heart ~ it’s the moment  I find a nickname for that person. It usually unfolds naturally. My dear actor friend is ‘lovey dovey’, for instance.

Words are the ties that bind. And names matter. As Shakespeare’s Juliet so rightly said, ”

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

So, what’s in your name?

In my book, everything that makes you special to that other person.

2 Comments

  1. Karin Baster

    March 2, 2012 at 3:06 pm

    Hello Christine,

    i like this very beautiful picture of God’s Names you’ve posted above. Did you created it by yourself? Where can i get it?

    Blessings,
    Karin

    1. powerofslow

      powerofslow

      March 2, 2012 at 3:40 pm

      Thank you, Karin! If you google “God’s names” under “photos” I bet you’ll find it. 🙂

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