WHAT’S IN A NAME
In mid-November, Jan and I filled our birdfeeders and carefully positioned them outside the double-window near our kitchen table. We enjoy watching chickadees, juncos, woodpeckers and other birds pecking at seed encrusted suet and eating from our tube feeders. With the past few weeks’ extreme cold and snow, the birds have been exceptionally hungry.
A few days ago, I began to wonder where all these bird names come from. Why do we call one bird a “finch” and another a “titmouse?” Who labeled one a “wren” and another a “starling?” Deciding to investigate, I discovered that how birds got their names is a lot more complicated than I realized.
First of all, the very term “bird” hasn’t always meant what we now assume it means. Several centuries ago, the people of the British Isles used the word “brid” only to describe a baby bird, a chick, or nestling. (How “brid” or “bridd” became “bird” is a whole other linguistic story!) What we now call an adult bird was described as a “fowle,” a naming convention preserved only in our term “waterfowl.” The 1611 King James Version still refers to the “fowl of the air” in Genesis whereas modern translations now call them “birds of the air.” Eventually English-speaking peoples dropped the distinction between “fowl” and “bird” and began to call everything a “bird.” Which is a good thing. In Beowulf, which dates from somewhere between 800 and 1100 CE, the author uses the Old English word from which “fowl” is derived, calling a bird “fugle” – a word that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as it rolls off our tongues: “I’m going out to fill the fugle feeder” would sound more like a tongue twister than a statement of fact.
Specific names likewise have a convoluted history. It’s not difficult to puzzle out how the woodpecker got its name. And chickadees obviously got their name from the sound they make. “Blackbird” sounds like a simple enough name. It’s a bird and it’s black. Hence, a “blackbird.” But it’s not really that simple. After all, a lot of other birds are black. Crows, for example. Or ravens. Who decided to call this one species a “blackbird” and name the others something different? Acccording to one ornithology source I consulted, blackbirds weren’t originally called what we call them. As late as Shakespeare’s time, they were called “ouzels.” What changed is that this particular species was smaller than all the others. So, it became a “bird” rather than “fowle” and hence the only “black-bird.”
The opening chapters of Genesis describe how each creature as it was created was placed before the first human who bestowed its name upon it. “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every animal of the field…” (Genesis 2:18-20a)
Humans have a deep-seated need to name and to be named. We obviously adjust and rename things as time passes, cultures change, or language evolves. Nonetheless, we recognize there is great power in names and naming. We name to identify, to symbolize, to describe.
In our baptism, we are sprinkled or maybe dipped or immersed in water and the presider says our name over us. “XYZ, I baptize you in the name of the Creator, Christ, and Spirit.” In baptism we are named before God by our one true name. In Isaiah 49:16, we are told that God has written our name on the palm of God’s hand.” In Revelation 2:17, John of Patmos says that those who are faithful will receive a white stone with their name known only to God on it.
Our names do change and shift across our lifetimes. Just like blackbirds and wrens, robins and juncos, how we name ourselves or how others name us may change. We may alter our name when we marry or divorce. We may
decide we want to be called by our nickname rather than our given name. All of us at one time or another are called names that may discount or diminish our sense of worth or value. Or inflate our egos.
Amid all the mutations and vicissitudes of our names, those by which we name ourselves and those others name us, the only name that really matters is the one by which we are called in our baptism: God’s beloved in Christ.
With prayer,
Pastor Thomas