Dear Friends,

Religion, fairy tales, books. That longstanding fight between good and evil. In all of these stories there is a consistent theme that helps defeat the darkness and gives the hero or heroine the ability to weaken their opponent. What is this timeless weapon, wielded by young and old? “How vain, without the merit, is the name." ~ Homer

Names yield power. The ability to call something by their proper name gives it a form, a body and a purpose. If it’s real, you can defeat it.

Think about movies involving the supernatural or demon possession; we learn that until you can give a name the entity you can’t defeat it. “Paranormal Activity”, “The Conjuring”, “The Exorcist” all follow the same basic principle. Name the demon, and you weaken it. Game over, demon.

Even classic stories, like “Rumpelstiltskin”. For those of you who don’t know the 1812 German tale, only knowing the “Shrek” version, his background is slighter darker than the ability to grant lopsided wishes.

In the classic tale, Rumpelstiltskin helps a young maiden by making it seem like she can magically spin straw into gold. In exchange, he requests her first born daughter as payment. At the time she was fearful of her life and a future child was not in the cards, so she agrees. When the maiden eventually catches the eye of and marries the King, and gives birth to a baby girl, the only way she can get out of her deal is by calling out his name to break the pact. Through some clever trickery, she gets him to tell her his name, and the deal is broken. Game over, Rumpelstiltskin.

Famous English writer, and author of one of the creepiest children’s stories ever, “Coraline”, Neil Gaiman, once said: “First rule of magic: don’t let anyone know your real name. Names have power.”

We don’t think about it like this. Each of us goes through life with our name on our sleeve, offering is everywhere we go. We are taught that it’s how you properly introduce yourself. Good eye contact, firm handshake, friendly smile. “Hi, my name is (fill in the blank)”. We give it freely and for many of us it’s part of our daily lives. Despite this, our names still hold power.

I think about how much I stressed over naming my daughters. When I was pregnant with my oldest, we went round and round about girl names. For some reason the boy name was easier and we quickly agreed on it. But for some reason we could not agree on a girl name and nothing seemed to fit. I remember one night we had dinner at a restaurant and the waitress signed her name to the check. Rach’s dad looked at the slip and said “Rain. That’s nice?” and looked at me questioningly. Ummm no. Finally, inspired by the show “Friends” we landed on Rachel. I wanted her name to look a little fancier so we added the extra “a” which ensured her name would for sure be spelled wrong for most of her life, but it looks nicer that way.

With my second child it was a little easier. If the baby was a girl, we knew we wanted Grace, after my grandmother. But we could not think of a boy name. Hindsight says it’s because deep down we knew we were having a girl. One weekend we took a trip to the Adirondacks, baby name book in hand, and talked about possible names. Blake tried for a good part of the drive to get me to agree to the name “Slater”, but all I could do was think of the show, ”Saved by the Bell”. Inspired once again by a television show, it was “Prison Break” this time, we settled on the name “Lincoln” (Link for short). When I shared this news with my friends the responses were “Ohh … that’s different …” code for “we don’t like it”.

My best friend actually threatened to hold the birth certificate hostage until we changed our mind and continued to offer alternate boy names until the day I went into labor. The day Grace was born she was able to lay down her mantel and just enjoy our new bundle. I wouldn’t have relented, but she was sure persistent.

This past weekend my family and I attended a gender reveal party, which prompted a conversation about how their names, our names and what our alternatives were. I ended up contacting my mom because I have heard the story of how they named me “Kerri”, but I never asked what my boy name was. I was surprised to learn that it was “Nicholas” and an alternative girl name for me was “Sophia”.

My daughter’s boyfriend shared that he was named after Saint Damian, who was a healer. Interesting namesake, as he just graduated from college and is beginning his career as an ER nurse in a few weeks. While he was named for a Saint, he shared that his mom was worried that people would associate him with the character “Damien” from the movie “The Omen”. Dark, sinister, spawn of Satan. The funny part about that is I am pretty sure that’s why my older brother named my nephew Damian. No, he’s not dark and sinister but my brother has a dark sense of humor.

Do you know where your name comes from? What the alternatives were? It’s a fun conversation to have so I encourage you to do it. The bigger question is, do you think you would have done anything differently if you had a different name?

How much power does your name have?

Be well,

~ Kerri

The views and opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views and positions of any entity that this author represents.