What's in a Name?

A heading made by a special friend when I started this project elsewhere

Names have meanings, and in sacred scripture in the Abrahamic Tradition (which is just a fancy way of saying for Judaism, Christianity and Islam) this is particularly true. God often gives a name for a person or even changes the name of a person to reflect more fully who they are meant to be. When Hagar was running away from Abraham's wife, after her master had gotten her pregnant, God sent an angel to tell her to name the boy Ishmael (God hears). And Hagar named God at that point too: "She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen[c] the One who sees me” (Genesis 16:13). God changed the name of Abram to Abraham, which is generally understood as being a change from "Exalted Father" to "Father of many" (Genesis 17:4). After Jacob wrestled with the angel or with God, he was given the name Israel, "because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome" (Genesis 32:28). So names are often designed to reveal the nature of something.

The 99 names of Allah are very much that way. They are names that speak of aspects of God's nature. The Bible says, "The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe" (Proverbs 18:10).

There is power in names. Jesus told his followers to pray in his name (it is one of the reasons that we don't think of him as just a man.) In the name of Jesus, there is power also over demons, though that power does not rest just in invocation of the name alone. When the seven sons of Sceva tried to cast out demons, "In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches," they got a big surprise. A demon answered them "Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?" and beat them up (Acts 19:13-16). So the power is not just in the sounds of the words, like a magic formula. The power lies in connection with God who stands behind his name.

When we do something in someone's name, we are doing it as a stand-in for that person, and it implies that the authority of that person backs us up. Shoes too big for any person to fill, and "in the name of God," "in the name of Jesus," and "Bismillah" have been claimed for some pretty horrendous deeds. But the fact that these phrases have been used wrongly is not a reason to avoid them. Properly used, they can make us mindful of the gap between us and God, and our need to do all that we can do to reflect more of who God is back to the Source.

I think it is worth considering what it is that it means to honor the name of God, because Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe that this is part of what God wants us to do, and yet we approach the fulfillment of this duty in very different ways. In the Ten Commandments, the Bible says, "“You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name" (Exodus 20:7; Deuteronomy 5:11) . The old fashioned words, memorized by many Christians, said not to "use the name of the Lord in vain". Christians routinely pray, "hallowed be thy name" in the old fashioned words of the Lord's Prayer. But most Christians that I know do not spend a whole lot of time thinking about what it means either not to "use the name of the Lord in vain" or to "hallow" it. We've figured out that we are not supposed to use the name of God as a curse, but sometimes that's as far as it goes.

Jews take this command very seriously, especially in terms of the name of God that is the tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew letters that in English are YHWH. For millenia, they have avoided saying that name of God, lest they "use it in vain". In everyday conversation, rather than even saying "God" , observant Jews will often say, "Ha Shem," which means "the Name".

Muslims are at the other end of the spectrum. Sprinkled through their lives are a variety of phrases which quite deliberately use the name of Allah. I am sure that there are some people who forget what these phrases mean, much as people with very little faith may say "God bless you" when they hear someone sneeze and almost no longer remembers regularly that Goodbye used to be short for "God be with ye." But the phrases are clearer in Arabic, and I suspect that even people who say them normally without thinking of what they mean in relationship to Allah are sometimes brought up short by the message in their own mouths.

These are the kind of phrases I am talking about: Bismillah "in the name of Allah", a phrase for the opening of every new endeavor. Alhamdu'lillah, "Praise Allah" a very close cognate to "Hallelujah", but used much more frequently than anyone but the most avid Pentecostals (sometimes called "Hallelujahs" by outsiders because of their fondness for the phrase). Masha'Allah, literally "whatever God wills", but in flavor more like "wonderful". Insha'Allah, "God willing", which even most Christians recognize.