What's in a Name?

This article, from a recent MOMSense Magazine (September/October 2006) seemed most appropriate:

My mother took great care in naming me. I supposed most mothers do. Even the famous "Hogg" family from Houston, Texas, where I grew up, thought about the selection of "Ima" and "Ura" for their daughters names.

In my family, the story goes that my mother lay in her hospital bed with the newly born "me" close by in a bassinet. My father sat with a box top from a gift folded flat in his lap and a pencil provided for my mother's meal selection between his fingers. My mother stared at the ceiling and every now and then recited another name for the growing list. My father scribbled it down and then doodled first-, middle- and last-name initials into monograms. Monograms must have been big in 1955.

See, the thing is, my mom wanted to name me Lisa. By my dad said that Lisa Lee (my maiden name) sounded like a stripper. Like mad scientists among test tubes and potions, they worked together to concoct a suitable variation that carried the intention of my mother's imagined identity for me and the boundaries of my father's protection.

I still have that box top with my father's neat printing scrawled in columns:
Melissa
Alisa
Malisa
Yllissa
Ilisha
Ilisa
Melesa

And there... topping off the upper right-hand corner, the winner: Elisa.

I think back on this process and wonder, Who would I have been if I was Alisa, Melesa or Yllissa rather than Elisa? Would it really have mattered?

Names shape us. Just as the place we're born, our order of arrival in a family system, the decade in which we grew up, the presence or absence of our father and mother, and the income level of our neighborhood - names shape our identity. We grow up into them.

In the Bible, people took great care with names because the culture of the time understood the connection between naming and becoming. Eve - the first woman - means "mother of all the living." Fitting, don't you think? Mary, the mother of Jesus who so unbelievably released her son to his destiny, carried about a name meaning "bitterness." There are many moments recorded in Scripture where a name was changed to reflect a change in identity. Jesus renamed Simon as Peter, "the Rock" on which God would build His church.

Elisa means "consecrated to God." I'm pretty sure my parents had no clue. I found that out in my early 20s when I did some research for a project, and ever since, there's something in me that wants to grow up into the meaning of my name. I wonder what Yllissa means. Probably something like "One-eyed Owl."

Anyway, today I know that my name has shaped me, both in the way in which it was selected and in the way it's carried me for half a century. Funny, though, other than my husband, few family members ever use this name when they address me. My brother calls me "Itza" for "Lisaitsapizzaface." My grandson, Marcus, runs piping through the door, "Yia Yia! Yayayayayaya Yia Yia! And my kids - even in their 20s now - call me a name that also has come to define and shape me - and one that I want to grow up into: Mom!

"A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold." Proverbs 22:1

Elisa Morgan, President and CEO, MOPS International

Stay tuned... maybe we'll choose a name for Baby Girl soon.