"What's in a name?" A name has indeed but little meaning unless it expresses the essential qualities of the person or thing to which it is applied. The poetic feeling of a race frequently finds expression in the naming of people and places. The Jews of Scripture times sought this form of expression, even to the extent of changing a name when it seemed no longer suitable. Thus, when Jacob had prevailed "as a prince" and had "power with God and with men, "his name was changed to Israel. When it was given to Isaiah to foretell the coming of one who should save the race, the express image of divine Love, the truth which was to make men free, he was impelled to heap one glorious name upon another, giving to his vision of the Christ those sounding titles— "Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace"—whose magnificence Handel endeavored to portray by shout of chorus and clash of orchestra in his monumental music.
Again, when Saul of Tarsus had caught his first glimpse of this divine truth which was to make men free, and had drawn back in genuine repentance from the path of persecution to become a humble follower of the light which he had seen, his name was changed from Saul, which means "asked for," to Paul, which means "little." As the years went on and the disciples of the Master learned to understand better what was in man by striving to follow him who knew that so well, it was given to John at least to perceive that no mere human name could ever express the essential qualities of a man. "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."
Each of us has to undertake a warfare with himself. "The human self must be evangelized," Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, p. 254); the truth of being must be demonstrated; but so long as the struggle lasts we will have meat to eat that the world knows not of, and the receptive spirit, "prepared as a bride adorned for her husband," will learn to know its own essential qualities, powers, and capacities as no one else knows them save the bridegroom. The real name of any person or thing, then, must be an expression of the truth about that person or thing. This is often the reason why schoolboys and schoolgirls invent names for their companions, names intended to express certain qualities and capacities more nearly than the conventional or traditional ones bestowed on and inseparably attached to the human infant before it has had a chance to express its individuality.
