The Medicine In Changing Your Name…
MALUMAS & TAKETES: THE SYMBOLIC POWER OF WORDS
The only constant in life is change, proclaimed Greek philosopher Heraclitus, way back in the day. The ebb and flow, contraction expansion, life death and rebirth is ever present within all.
On a personal level, we change our clothes, change our careers, change our relationships, change our beliefs, thoughts, behaviours, religions, businesses, brands, environment and more.
It’s even said that our body constantly replaces old cells with new ones at the rate of millions per second, with about 50 million cells having died and being replaced by the time you finish this sentence.
Despite the inevitably of change, how interesting it is that most of us go from birth til death without ever changing our name. Rooted in our psyches is the thread of sociality and survival; of wanting -or perhaps needing- to fit in; to feel safe; to feel secure; to be given identity; to be accepted.
Our names play a role in this.
Through the signs and symbols that we verbally articulate, we give meaning and identity to people, places, ideas, and all other manner of animate and inanimate forms on our planet. It’s an evolutionary thing.
If our ancestors were meandering through pine forests and a saber-toothed tiger happened to be on the prowl, arm waving wasn’t enough to cut it. Clearly we need sounds and verbalizations to communicate and make sense of the world around us.
Not only do we have an inclination towards slotting things into categories for ease of understanding as we compartmentalize our way through life; naming things and beings can also carry the weight of emotional significance.
Whether it’s anthropomorphizing our surroundings, or developing an emotional attachment to a particular mouth-sound that gives something meaning, there’s a certain magic within names. Sound is vibration and vibration is energy. All names carry a particular energy, some of which resonate with their physical manifestation, and some of which don’t.
The psychological experiment between “malumas” and “taketes”, for example, suggests that words convey symbolic ideas beyond their surface level meaning. People were asked to designate the word “maluma” and “takete” with one of two particular shapes, with the majority of people feeling that malumas were soft and rounded, and taketes were sharp and jagged, which they both were.
How interesting it is to reflect on how much of our own identity, and how others perceive us, is shaped by the sounds and symbols used to identify us.
MULTIPLE NAMES: EVERYDAY & SPIRIT NAMES
In much of Western culture, our designated birth name seems to be as inseparable to us as is our shadow, aside from a few notable occasions of course, such as divorce, marriage, religion, changes in sexuality, political statements, employment reasons, or personal branding.
Our birth names, arguably, are often given without much depth of spiritual significance, and typically carry on unhindered by the constant flux we experience as ever-evolving beings. Interestingly, various traditions, many of which are found within nature-based cultures, dance a different rhythm.
Like the coming and going of seasons, some communities give and receive more than one name within their lifetimes to reflect significant changes. Some newborns may start with a nickname, or a “false name”, or no name at all, waiting until they’re old enough to either choose their own name or be given a name through certain circumstances, such as being initiated by a rite of passage.
Spiritual elders, shaman and medicine-people in these communities often play a primary role in naming children or individuals. Communing with the spirit world, ancestral realms, and through nature herself, involving lengthy meditations, rituals and ceremonies, ensures that the name bestowed carries an “essence” in alignment with the individual receiving the name.
Some communities and their individuals may carry several names at once; such as their everyday name, and their spirit names.
The names we’re given carry a vibration. For some people, as they weave and dance with the cosmic inevitability of change, shifting and recalibrating to what one might deem to be a life in greater alignment to heart and soul, they might come to feel that their birth name doesn’t carry the vibration that reflects their current evolutionary path; who one is, and who one is becoming.
THE POTENTIAL OF A NEW NAME: PERSONAL POWER & MEDICINE
Beyond the social imperative to fit in, to be understood, or to be accepted by tribe, contemplating the nature of identity and attachment to our name is an interesting meditation…
Attachment to symbols; the letters that make up our name when we write them down. Attachment to sounds; the noises that we identify with that come out of our mouth.
How attached are we to these sounds and symbols? How attached are we to adopting new ones? How attached do we become to the new ones if we adopt them? How attached are we to receiving validation and approval from others? What about the fears of being laughed at, judged, rejected or ostracized for making such a change?
When it comes down to it, all symbols and signs -whether contained within our own personal names or otherwise- can carry immense meaning, and ultimately it’s up to us to discern what meaning we’re assigning to such things.
Some may feel on a visceral level that the vibrational quality of the name their parents decided for them doesn’t resonate in their body with complete and utter certitude. It could be enough for one to entertain the idea of a name change.
Names that feel more congruent on an integrated level -visually, phonetically, symbolically, and literally- hold potential to elevate our personal power, our energy, and the way we carry forth and embody our medicine.
New names could be another reminder point to embody our gifts and stand up for what we believe in. New names can bring shapeshifting medicine; revealing that we’re in a constant flux of changing our identity in one way or another, and that we’re more than just a name; illuminating the greater inevitability of change, teachings around attachment, the many forms it comes in, alongside the many illusions within this cosmic joke of malleable reality we happen to find ourselves in.
To some of us, the nature of a name change could reveal itself as coyote medicine; the trickster, taking things too seriously, recognizing the malleability and fluidity of reality, and the meaning and wisdom perhaps initially overlooked in something as simple or silly as a name change.
As the moons wax and wane, you might find some people sitting in silence time and time again, reflecting, contemplating, listening. Perhaps performing little ceremonial rituals in the forest, or in the backyard, or allowing their prayers and meditations to weave through pipe, carried on smoke and wind, through the seen to the unseen, impregnating the great mystery with seeds of intention.
Those seeds might just grow, and in good time, Spirit might return the whispers with a tiny little dew drop of knowing through the top of one’s skull, rehydrating one’s skin like a warm blanket on the brisk wind of evenings pass.
A spirit name, or merely a stock standard name change, could well carry the energy of being another symbolic and vibrational point of remembrance; of soul wisdom and connection to spirit; of virtues, values, medicine and gifts; our humanness, yet our divinity.
RESISTANCE & TRIGGERING OTHERS.
SO IT IS.
It can be a slow and interesting process asking those you already know to address you by a different name. Name changes can carry layers of discomfort, for both the person standing tall in their new symbolic identity, and those on the other end, who have perhaps known the person for many years, sometimes a lifetime - especially when it comes to our family and our parents.
How strong are the subconscious patterns of seeking validation and acceptance from others, that we couldn’t honour the calling of stepping into a new name and identity for ourselves, due to the fear of upsetting our family?
Most people have a hard time as it is, changing aspects of their identity, changing their beliefs, behaviours, character and personality traits, and even if we do undertake the process of conscious change, it can trigger others.
Some people, especially family or close friends, can get super weird when you start to go through change. It can trigger their insecurities, it can challenge their own identity, it can bring up co-dependencies, it can highlight power-dynamics, anger, confusion, cross generational or intergenerational differences, rigid-belief structures; essentially, acting as a mirror to aspects of their own lives that they haven’t been willing to look at.
Name changes could stimulate a similar process of bringing forth potent medicine; into the nature of attachment, the inevitability of change, cultivating self-awareness and awakening, and the fluidity of reality.
How funny it can be that so much of our identity, and how others perceive us, can become wrapped up in the symbols and mouth noises used to identify us.
Birth, growth, dying, death, rebirth.
And so it is.
