What’s in a Name? (4)

She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” So she named him Judah. (Genesis 29:35)

If you are a parent, you probably remember the exciting moments of picking a name for your newborn child. How did you select the name? You probably thought about the names of your family, relatives or friends, or consulted with numerous baby name books or websites. Perhaps you named your child after a famous politician, Hollywood celebrity, or football or baseball player. My wife and I chose our three children’s names (Daniel, Sarah and Esther) from the Bible, praying for them to be a faithful man and women.

In recent decades in America, there seems to be a trend for parents to give unique and uncommon names to their children. Woodward (2005) showed that “between the 1950s and 1990s there was a consistent increase in diversity of names chosen in America.” This is particularly true for African Americans who may consider such names as a symbol of pride in their cultural heritage (Daniel and Daniel, 1998). Fryer and Levitt (2004) also found from a large data set from California that there was a significant shift in the naming practice of African Americans during the 1970s when parents began to give uniquely African American names to their children. Cultural and religious practices aside, these parents may not be aware that there is growing evidence that unusual first names signal or affect people’s lives and lifetime outcomes, often negatively, as shown in a recent paper David E. Kalist and I coauthored, (“First Names and Crime: Does Unpopularity Spell Trouble?” ).

Some parents may give pretty-sounding names to their children without thinking further about how their names might affect the children as they grow up. In response to our research, readers shared examples of some unusual names. One told the story of a woman who heard her doctor and nurse discussing placenta and thought it sounded pretty. She gave the name “Placenta” to her newborn girl. One teacher had a pupil named “Apathy.” A parent named her daughter “ShyAnne” (a variation of Cheyenne?). Someone noticed the nametag of a cashier—“Crystal Ball.”

Jacob in the Book of Genesis had twelve sons and one daughter from his two wives and two concubines. His wives, Leah and Rachel, competed with each other. If their competition were made one of today’s reality shows on TV, it would be called “Who will have more sons for Jacob?” We can imagine how contentious and full of conflicts Jacob’s home was! But God used the competition to establish the twelve tribes of Israel to fulfill his covenant to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The story goes like this.

God called Abraham to begin his long-term redemptive history to save mankind from their sins. He promised to make him a great nation and a source of blessing to all nations. Abraham was 75 years old then and his wife Sarah was past menopause. Still, Abraham believed in God’s promise and embarked on his life of faith. It was not until he was 100 years old, however, God gave him a son, Isaac, from his wife Sarah. Isaac means “laughter.” Every time the old couple called their son by the name, it reminded them of the joy that God granted them. The name also reminded them of their momentary unbelief (they had laughed when God told them they would have a son) and of God’s faithfulness in keeping his promises.

Isaac and Rebekah had twin boys, Esau and Jacob. God appointed Jacob, the younger son, to be the covenant son who would carry on the promise God had given to Abraham. Actually, Jacob caught Esau in his weak moment and bought his birthright with a bowl of lentil stew. Esau didn’t care about the spiritual heritage; he said, “I’m famished! … What good is the birthright to me?” Then Jacob disguised himself as his brother and tricked his old and blind father into blessings him. When Esau found out, he held a grudge against Jacob and tried to kill him. His parents, Isaac and Rebekah, sent Jacob away from home to protect his life and at the same time to get a wife from among his relatives because they didn’t want him to marry an idol worshiping Canaanite woman. Jacob made a long journey to Paddan Aram where his uncle Laban lived.

Jacob met his future wife Rachel at a well in the field; she was bringing a flock of her father’s sheep, as she was a shepherdess. When Jacob met her, he kissed her and began to weep aloud (I think it was love at the first sight). He was in love with Rachel and made a marriage proposal to her father that he would work for him seven years in return for her. Laban agreed. Seven years passed and Laban gave a wedding feast for Jacob. However, at night, he sent in Leah, his older daughter, to the honeymoon suite instead of Rachel. It was a classic bait and switch tactic. In the morning, Jacob discovered that it was Leah lying beside him! Laban made an excuse, saying, “It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one.” Then he promised to give Jacob Rachel as well, only in return for another seven years of free labor. Jacob agreed and that’s how he ended up with two wives.

When God saw that Leah was not loved, he opened her womb but Rachel was barren. When Leah had her first son, she named him Reuben, saying, “It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.” (Reuben means “he has seen my misery in Hebrew.) She named her second son Simeon (“one who hears”) because she believed that God heard that she was not loved and he gave her the son. Her third son was named Levi (“attached”) because Leah thought her husband would be attached to her now. She named the fourth son Judah (“praise”), saying, “This time I will praise the Lord.” Leah might not have been an attractive woman, but I believe that she was a woman of God.

Rachel was jealous of her sister. She asked Jacob to take her maidservant Bilhah as his concubine to produce children for her in order to build her own family. Bilhah gave birth to two sons. Rachel named the first Dan (“he has vindicated”) saying, “God has vindicated me; he has listened to my pleas and given me a son.” She named the second Naphtali (“my struggle”) saying, “I have had a great struggle with my sister, and I have won.”

Leah turned up the heat on the competition. She brought her own maidservant Zilpah into it. She gave birth to a son and Leah named him Gad (“good fortune”), exclaiming “What good fortune!” When Zilpah had her second son, Leah named him Asher (“happy”) saying, “How happy I am! The women will call me happy.” Leah had two more sons and a daughter of her own. She named Jacob’s ninth son Issachar (“reward”) saying, “God has rewarded me for giving my maidservant to my husband.” She named the next son Zebulun (“honor”) with the comment, “This time my husband will treat me with honor, because I have borne him six sons.” She named her daughter Dinah (“justified”).

Finally, God heard Rachel’s prayer and opened her womb. She named her first son Joseph (“may he add”) saying, “May the Lord add to me another son.” Indeed, God added another son to her family, though it cost her own life. Rachel had a great difficulty in childbirth. As she was dying, she heard that it was a boy and she named him Ben-Oni (“son of my trouble”). However, Jacob, who loved Rachel to the end, did not want to call his twelfth son trouble and changed his name to Benjamin which means “son of my right hand.”

Jacob’s family numbered around 70 people when they migrated to Egypt to avoid a great famine, but after 430 years, they came out of the slavery in Egypt as a great nation. The twelve sons of Jacob had become 12 tribes and conquered the Promised Land to establish the name of Israel, just as God promised to Abraham.

Leah and Rachel picked their sons’ names to express their sorrow and agony as well as their joy and hope. Sometimes they were shouts of praise and sometimes they were cries for help. However, both women were mindful of God in naming their sons. The names were a reflection of their prayer to God. I think it is beautiful to see a mother (or a father for that matter) name her child with a prayer. I also think that Benjamin is a much better name than Ben-Oni.


References

Daniel, Jerlean E. and Jack L. Daniel, “Preschool Children’s Selection of Race-related Personal Names,” Journal of Black Studies, 1998, 28(4), 471-490.

Fryer, Roland and Steven Levitt, “The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2004, 767-805.

Woodward, Richard, “Do Americans Desire Homogeneity? Evidence from Names from 1900-2000,” Economics Bulletin, 2005, 4(9), 1-6.