What’s in a Name?
By Amar D. Peterman, Indian American author, speaker, and public theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life.
Growing up, my family loved taking road trips. Most often, this looked like hitching a pop-up camper to an old Honda Odyssey and driving up Highway 41 into northern Wisconsin. No matter how far we were traveling, we always made an event out of stopping at the gas station. Practically, I'm sure this was an intentional strategy to coordinate bathroom breaks, especially when my sister and I were young. But it was always an adventure to roam the aisles, browse the hot-and-ready spread of pre-wrapped burgers, chicken strips, and hot dogs, and pick out the next road trip snack.
Across every gas station we visited, there was one item in common: trinkets. Every gas station has its assortment of knick-knacks that appear to be the most unique gift in the moment, but are rendered wholly unusable by the time you’ve departed the station.
My favorite of these useless collectibles was the keychain attachments that displayed your name. Some came in the form of a miniature license plate from that state, others morphed the landmarks of that city to create letters. At each gas station, I'd stop at the rotating station and scan the rows. I wanted to find one that had my name: "Amar."
Names are powerful. They are our first identity. And, for how commonplace names are, they are a window into the most intimate and true parts of ourselves. Given this, our names are often a complicated source of pride and pain. They can contain long histories or deep meaning, but they can also be mispronounced or stumbled through. Therefore, the task of speaking, giving, discovering, and remembering our names is of the utmost importance.
When people ask how to pronounce my name, I often joke that it depends on which side of the Wisconsin-Illinois border we are on. Growing up in Northeast Wisconsin, I grew accustomed to an American pronunciation of my name. It is what my parents, childhood friends, and spouse all call me. However, when I moved to downtown Chicago and began meeting Indian professors and classmates, my introduction came with a confused response. “You know you’re saying your name wrong, right?”
While I still object to the notion that my name was pronounced “wrong,” it wasn’t pronounced as it would be in India, or a Hindi-speaking home where the “r” is softened and the emphasis is placed on the first syllable, rather than the second. So, in contexts where more South Asians were present, I began introducing myself with this pronunciation.
Navigating these two pronunciations of my name—and correcting the many mispronunciations in-between—is part of what it means to live as an adoptee, as someone raised between the busy streets of New Delhi and the ever-expanding cornfields of Wisconsin. In this way, hearing my name pronounced in any way is simply a reminder of who I am.
In our world today, though, it is also important to acknowledge that the way our name is spoken can also be used for harm. Take, for example, political figures like Kamala Harris and Zohran Mamdani. Because each have a prominent public profile, there should be no excuse to mispronounce their names. Countless resources—even a simple Google search—put this information at our fingertips. And yet, Harris and Mamdani’s political opponents continued to claim ignorance while intentionally mispronouncing her name and complaining about its difficulty. In doing so, her opponents strategically highlighted her other-ness, her foreignness, her non-whiteness.
This American culture will always seek to remind us of how we don’t belong. But, as Kevin Wilson says of accents, our names are our armor, our power.1 When our names do not “fit” the context in which we live, it often means we’ve had to fight harder for what we have. When we speak—and pronounce—names rightly, we not only show respect and attention, but also uplift the complicated experiences of others who live in the margins of the dominant culture.
Names are powerful. They are our first identity. And, for how commonplace names are, they are a window into the most intimate and true parts of ourselves. Given this, our names are often a complicated source of pride and pain.
Writing about the Western Apache people, Willie Jennings explains in The Christian Imagination that giving names is a means through which we tell stories. Names help us both remember what was done in a particular place and identify how that place changes over time. This is true for locations as well as people. When we name someone, whether it is given at birth or a nickname for a friend, we place them in a larger story and trajectory. When a child is named after their grandparent, their name not only calls back to the memory of someone else, but also lives into what is valued or beloved about that person. And, as is often the case in Asian families, that value is the name itself (love, devotion, mercy, happiness) or a symbol of it (heart, ship, sky, ocean).
But, as Jennings continues, this is why the dehumanization of stripping someone of their name is so devastating. This extends from the classroom bully to the slave master. When African slaves were brought to the US, their ancestral names, which, again, carried the stories of their people and homeland, were replaced with a “Christian” name. Sometimes these enslaved Africans were reduced simply to a number.
This is why there is incredible power in giving names. This is not some magical omen that transforms the person being named. Rather, like an infant’s baptism, it is a blessing, setting someone on a course towards a greater thing. It bestows the hope, anticipation, and blessing of the name-giver on the one named for the rest of their lives. When a name is rightly said, then, it affirms and repeats that blessing again and again.
For some, though, the trajectory of a name can contradict their lived experience. This may be caused by a broken or strained relationship with the name-giver, new information about the one someone is named after, or a lack of alignment with the assumptions of gender contained in a name. For these reasons and more, the process of naming is always dynamic. Names change as identities, values, and priorities shift. In other words, if our names represent who we are as individuals, and we are always evolving, changing, and growing, then our names should follow suit.
This re-naming is life-giving as one is able to live into an identity or value given to them by friends or one that they’ve chosen for themselves. In this way, our name is always being discovered. For some, this looks like living into the deep complexities of a single name their whole life. For others, this looks like taking up a new name that better reflects their identity, self-perception, and the way they want to show up in the world.
Last, given the deep value of names, it is important that we remember them. This is evident in everyday interactions when, upon meeting someone for a second or third time, they don’t remember your name. While we often will brush this off, there’s a message conveyed in forgetting—a lack of care, concern, or relational closeness. On the other hand, there is a unique joy in discovering that someone has remembered your name, like when a barista at a local coffee shop writes it on a cup without asking you, or a co-worker greets you in the hallway. These emotions, both positive and negative, are magnified for those who change their name to better reflect their identity. Remembering a name—especially a chosen name—is a life-giving act.
Amid the violence, hatred, and death in our world, the importance of remembering names also extends to those who have passed beyond us. When we remember the names of those we’ve lost—those pulled from the street, killed in hate crimes, subject to the terrors of mass gun violence, and who take their own lives because the realities of this world can feel impossible to inhabit—we refuse to let the systems, structures, and individuals at fault have the last word.
Our name is always being discovered. For some, this looks like living into the deep complexities of a single name their whole life. For others, this looks like taking up a new name that better reflects their identity, self-perception, and the way they want to show up in the world.
Despite the countless gas stations I’ve visited in my life, I’ve never found a keychain with my name on it. On the one hand, this isn’t surprising at all. The market overlap for this trinket has got to be slim to none. On the other hand, though, this invisibility still stings just as painfully as it did as a child. It is a reminder of unbelonging. Even when creating these overpriced, mass-market trinkets, they didn’t even stop to consider a name like mine.
Perhaps this is because, as Jeff Chu writes in Good Soil, names matter. “Without them and the context they provide, something sacred is severed” (191). Yes, names are not only important, they are also sacred. A name places us in a broader community and context that gives and speaks our name. It also places us on a hopeful trajectory towards an ultimate reality of goodness, truth, and beauty. As we embody and live out our name, we are wrapped up in the past and ushered towards a new future. This is why, when our names are not said or remembered, something sacred is lost.
In my mind, it should be no surprise that rightly speaking, giving, discovering, and remembering our names is tied directly to mental health. When I hear my name pronounced as I desire or live in such a close community that I am bestowed with a name that reflects our identity, my mental health can flourish as I know—and am known by—others. Every time we are called on by name, we are reminded of the people who love and care for us.
But the opposite is also true. When I am cut off from the histories and legacies that our name carries or live in a community where my name is not recognized, my mental health can suffer. In other words, the way our name is spoken and remembered can often be a sign of if we are in communities that will help us live into and out of our identity, or if we are in a place that seeks to otherize us because of the places we come from.
This is why the task of speaking, giving, discovering, and remembering our own names and the names of those around us matters decisively. This is the good and sacred work of fostering equity, inclusion, and belonging, of uplifting the humanity of our neighbors, and refusing to let systems of erasure and ignorance have the last word.
Amar D. Peterman is an Indian American author, speaker, and public theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. He writes regularly in his weekly newsletter, This Common Life.
Kevin Wilson (@crossculturekev), "When they attempt to speak your language with their words, it’s a sign of their bravery and not stupidity," Threads, February 7, 2025, https://www.threads.com/@crossculturekev/post/DFyc_b8SRGY
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