What's in a name?

A conversation with some friends over the weekend left me with the surprising realization that most of us still believe that a person's name is a very fundamental part of their identity. I must admit that I was more than a trifle nonplussed at this realization - and it really aroused in me a curiosity to know why one might think so.

The conversation began with some views about an increasingly common phenomenon nowadays - people changing their names when they start living permanently in another country. Some people shorten their original names just as a matter of convenience. Others change the very nature of their names - and so, for example, a number of Indians who come to to the US adopt Anglicized names. The general consensus on this action seemed to be that people who did this inherently gave up their cultural roots, and surrendered a very essential part of their identity - I disagreed with this, but was surprised to find myself completely at odds with everyone else.

In some ways, maybe I should have seen it coming. A while back, a close friend, soon to be married, expressed a disinclination to change her surname on marriage, because she believed her current surname was very fundamental to her identity, and a big part of who she was. I remember being surprised even then when I heard that - I always taught it was a person's actions and beliefs that made up their identity? So what is in a name?

There are multiple ways this question can be approached, but lets tackle the direct one - how we use names to form judgments about people. Let's first look at this historically. A few hundred years ago, a person's name told you exactly where they came from, what their job was, what religion they followed and what caste they belonged to. So a person's name really was a stand-in for many other aspects of their life - an indicator, essentially of other things. Today, this is still true to a large extent. However, with the level of global interaction we have now, the increased number of interfaith and inter-community marriages, and the blending of cultural boundaries, these distinctions are starting to get blurred. So the role of the name as an indicator of a person's identity is slowly, but surely being eroded. Based on this, it seems very reasonable to predict that soon a person's name will come to possess very little information about his background and identity.

Ok, let's store that fact away for now, and look at people who change their names. Now here's what I think should be the approach to this - it's not really all that important why a person changes his/her name - that is anyway something that in many cases we might never know. What is important, however, is how we react to that action, as someone external to that person - how we judge them for it, how we perceive them.

Let's take a hypothetical situation. Say I meet this person who introduces himself to me as John Doe. By his looks, I can tell that he is clearly of South Asian descent (something, incidentally, that one can be less and less sure of nowadays, what with so many inter-cultural marriages) - but the name John Doe is a very American one. Based on the information I have gathered and processed in the two seconds since I've met him, what mental picture do I form of him?

The standard picture would be the one i suggested earlier as being the prevalent view - and the one that I believe we should really be fighting against forming. Personally speaking, I know that my own instinctive reaction would be to brand him as someone who isn't really connected to his culture and roots, someone who just changed his name to fit into another culture, and who, therefore, had sacrificed a very intrinsic part of his identity. But I strongly believe that that instinctive reaction is highly unfair to the other person, and is one we should all fight to overcome. The critical realization is this - that a name is but an indicator of a person's identity - it does not define it. And the validity of that indicator is one that is slowly decreasing today, as I mentioned earlier.

So what defines a person's identity? A person's identity always has, and always will be, intrinsically linked to his actions and beliefs. Beliefs of course are difficult to understand from the outside - and therefore, as one human being to another, you can really judge a person only on the basis of their actions. So let's say that after I met John Doe, I made the attempt to get to know him a little better, and found out that he'd grown up in a small village in India, but then came to the US and since then had settled down here. He has certainly come a long way from his humble beginnings, and now leads his life as a respected and successful member of his community in the US. However, in his mind he still considers himself very much a part of his family back home, and sees a strong spiritual connection to his roots. He believes that his success was built on the efforts of many back home, and so he tries to do as much as he can for his family and community back home in India. He does not try to hide any of this from his friends in the US, and is more than happy to talk with them about his culture.

The above hypothetical situation begs two questions - one, how real is John Doe? How hypothetical is that situation? And two, what would I think of him? In answer to the first - I do not think that one can rule out, at the fundamental level, the existence of such John Does. I do agree that their number is probably fairly low - because the name is still a reasonably good indicator - but I do not think his existence is a theoretical impossibility. I also believe that the probability of his existence will only go up over time, as we become more global and accepting in our thinking. This would be even more true when we consider how an inter-cultural couple might name their children.

As for the second question, I fail to see how I could ever brand John Doe as someone who has sacrificed his identity and roots. His actions would clearly indicate otherwise, and in this situation I would be forced to accept that the name really was not a very good indicator.

Another point raised was of the need for role models, and how for any community - especially smaller ones - the existence of role models from their community is a huge inspiration for young ones. Therefore, as a young person, brimming with ideas, the recognition of a person who bears a name similar to mine, and has been a huge success, is one that can be very inspiring. Again, this is largely true in society today. However, let's say that I, as a parent, need to provide my child with a role model. I have, on the one hand, John Doe, and on the other, there is Kartik Gopinath, a person who also lives in the same community as John Doe, and has attained a similar level of success. However, in his thinking and actions, he sees little connection with his beginnings. He maintains little or no contact with people back home, prefers not to talk about them with his friends, and his name means little to him. Now again - how real is Kartik? Very real, I believe. And as a father, who would I prefer to present as a role model to my son? Would the fact that John Doe has an American name irreparably reduce his worth as a role model in my eyes? What, as an objective and caring father, do I do? The answer seems fairly obvious to me.

So where does this bring us? And where do we need to go from here? I believe that from the larger perspective of global unity and oneness, an attachment to a person's name, and the formation of judgments based on that can only be detrimental, and a source of divisiveness. It is true that in the past a person's name has been a very reliable indicator of his beliefs and actions. Given that this connection is not a fundamental one - and an increasingly dubious one given the current context of the world - can we afford to continue considering it to be sacred? When I choose to look at a person's skin color and then his name, see a mismatch between them in terms of what I expect, and make a judgment based on that, am I doing anything other than promoting existing stereotypes and preconceived notions? Should I not, instead, make a sincere attempt to find out more about him, and then form my opinion of him based on what I see of his actions? If I do find his actions suggesting that he has little or no appreciation for the contribution his own family/community/upbringing has had in his success, then of course I can make certain definitive statements. However, is it acceptable that I extrapolate this from the fact that he changed his name? I believe not.

From a spiritual perspective, if we accept the existence of an eternal human soul, and the temporary and material nature of our bodies, this becomes even more obvious. In a larger spiritual context, nothing that is a part of my material nature is really intrinsic to me - not my physical appearance, not my gender, not my skin color, and certainly not my name.

Given all the above, the questions we really need to answer for ourselves are these - What can I, as an individual, do to take society towards a more ideal state? How can I ensure that at least in my own interactions with the people around me - the only thing I can really control - I am unbiased and objective? How can i prevent myself from attributing reasons for actions based on my preconceived notions, when I have no idea of what goes on in another human being's mind? How can I make my instinctive reaction one of unbridled love? And how can I become truly accepting of every single person around me?