What’s in a Name?

My man, Bill Shakespeare said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. He may have had a point there. What Willy Shakes didn’t quite consider is what happens when you mess up a person’s name or give them a completely different name.

My husband has a horrible memory for people’s names. He often decides to christen them a name completely different from the one their parents gave them at birth.

Here’s are a couple of examples:
1) The brother of my good friend has been renamed David by my husband. His Christian name is Joseph. I have no idea why my husband thinks that David fits him better but Gosh forbid I can get him to call him by his real name any more.
2) At a wedding we met a couple whose names were Pablo and Elizabeth. Pretty easy to me. But when we saw them at the airport the next morning my husband claimed ‘Hey there is Mike!’
My response was to look around to see if there was a Mike around that I knew. No Mike!
“Where is Mike?”
“Right there” he pointed to Pablo
“Honey, that’s Pablo. Not Mike.”
“He doesn’t look like a Pablo and his wife doesn’t look like an Elizabeth. Maybe a Carolina but definitely not an Elizabeth.”
I basically just rolled my eyes and continued to wait in the check out line

Now, don’t get me wrong. This kind of thing has happened to me as well.
In the early stages of one of my book clubs, we were meeting at particularly noisy places. We went around introducing ourselves and one gentleman said his name was Devon. And so that his name stuck with me and I would remember it, I repeated it. Later on, I learned his name was Daniel. To this day though, I refer to him as Devon even though I know his name is Daniel.

What I’m suggesting is that no matter what we want, we should try to really learn people’s names, even if they don’t ‘fit’ them.