What’s in a Name? Or the Goddess Power of Naming

The baby’s cry startled me, as I knew it was my own child, and the color of blue turned to pink quickly.
I had remembered from my childhood, a 45 r.p.m. children’s record, which began, “Let us imagine that it’s a bright summers’ day, and you’re out walking near the banks of a lovely little stream.” (The actor’s distinguished voice was Claude Raines.) “Maybe you’re headed for the old swimming hole,” (an obvious reference to boys) or maybe you’re just out, gathering flowers, so that you can bind them into a bright yellow garland that you can wear in your hair.” (an obvious reference to girls).
“It’s a girl, my husband said, “You were right.”
As the narration from childhood went on, the actor said, “Well, that’s easy to imagine now, isn’t it? But now listen; do you hear that? It’s a baby, and it’s crying, yes, a baby, all alone, hidden in some rushes in the riverbank. What’s it doing there?”
There had been no overuse of sonograms then, except in what were deemed dire emergencies. So, the only way I could have known was through intuition, a trait encouraged in my upbringing. I had closed my eyes and meditated to hear what Mom called, “that still, small voice” telling me, “You are pregnant,” and I “saw” a little blonde-haired girl with a chignon on the top of her head, backstage in a theatre, neat the curtain…just waiting…
“Oh well, never mind,” continued the actor, “That would never happen to you, I’m sure. But the Bible tells us that it did happen.”
I got the book for baby names, paying minimal attention to boys’ names, like maybe, James Eric.
The 45 r.p.m. record with a picture of “Moses and the Bulrushes” and “Noah and the Ark” began to play what I know now as beautiful oboe music set to an Egyptian tune. The actor went on to describe how an Egyptian Princess discovered a boy baby in a basket and how she knew by its blanket, it was Hebrew baby, how she said to her mistress, “ What difference does it make whether it’s a Hebrew or an Egyptian? It’s a baby, and it needs a mother.”
But my full concentrated effort was finding a girl’s name. I’d read and seen How Green Was My Valley and wanted the name, Bronwen, but to stick a kid with a name like that?
Since I was working at the town newspaper at that time, I was working with pictures and captions and saw the name, Robin Deutch. Little did that lady know, whomever she was, that she would influence my choice. That’s it! Robin Bronwen. I had a natural tendency toward poetry.
I kept repeating it, even to my husband. He kind of resisted, “You know that name? It sounds like of like a bird.”
But I was determined, as I repeated it. “Robin Bronwen, Robin Bronwen.”
And when she was born, and I told people what her name was, in full, they’d stop. They’d ask questions like, “Is that a family name?”
As the record progressed, the kind you had to put in a special small cylinder, to make it flip down one disc at a time, the actor told how the princess decided to call the child’s name, “Moses, because she drew him out of the water.”
What Goddess-like power we females have! There’s always some kind of intuitive reason we have to actually name a child. We seem to have taken over where Adam left off, naming all the animals, but being nonplussed as to who would be his companion. So God brought him this female, kind of looked a little bit like him (with some exceptions), and she said that, for the most part, she’ll take over the naming job from here.
My sister-in-law, Ruth Ann was the first to ask, once it was official, “What are you going to name it?” I was stunned that I would already have to go to work to figure that one out. She, herself had named her first born, Missy, after a comic strip girl and her second daughter, Minda, was insulted that she was named after a lady her mother didn’t like, but she liked her name.
All the way down the line, she selected one Norwegian name and one Greek name for each child.
I read somewhere in metaphysical literature that the child picks his or her parents and tries to influence his or her name.
My daughter accepted that first name, but wasn’t so sure about the second one. But when one of her male friends linked it to, How Green Was My Valley, without my informing him about that being an earlier influence, she seemed to accept it more.
The 45 r.p.m. record continued to tell how Moses rose to eventually free his own people, once he discovered he was Hebrew, from the slavery of the Pharaoh. For the pharaoh had the Hebrews building castles, pyramids, and palaces for long, strenuous hours.
Well, that little bird, my daughter, has a chance at freedom as never before in history, at least, in this country. She’s already way more motherly than I ever was, with her degree in early childhood, a lot of Montessori and Nanny work. But part of her writes and speaks creatively like me and also pursues more scientific (i.e. medical-dental) education toward which my husband leans.
Obama would be the modern-day Hebrew, and Hillary, the freed woman. (When I said years back that I identified with Hillary, my husband said, “I knew Hillary well; she’s a friend of mine…and you’re no Hillary Clinton.” Now, I’m kind of glad I don’t identify that much anymore. He was right.)
So Moses named by his Egyptian mother, went on to free his people.
When we women name our children, for example, Martin Luther King jr., after the first historical figure of the Reformation, who knows what effect that will have on the child and consequently, history?
When we took that little baby to the well baby clinic the first time, and they called out her full name, hearing that, in itself, seemed…magical.