It’s always strange on a Friday to be surrounded by famous names.
In our house, everyone has a name that is peculiarly and particularly not famous.
My eldest, Miriam, is Huncs. Huncs is a contraction of Hunca Munca, who is one of the Bad Mice in Beatrix Potter’s ‘Tale of Two Bad Mice’, and Miriam is Hunca Munca because when she was little she was a bad mouse.
Silas is Fish, because when he was little he was wriggly and scaly.
And Esther is Pippin. I honestly don’t know why Esther is Pippin, but when Esther was little she was Pippin, so Esther is Pippin.
Nobody else calls my guys by these names, not even their Mum, because these are the names I gave them.
These are the names that bind us to one another. These are the names that tell them I know them and I love them.
Names are important.
Bands will spend forever thinking up a good name. Well, some bands. Supergrass is snappy, whereas I always thought ‘The Jimi Hendrix Experience’ betrayed a certain lack of imagination.
Actors protect their names, to avoid confusion, or change them to something truly unusual like, er, Will Young.
Somewhere out there is a young actor called Bradley Walsh who can’t be called Bradley Walsh because Bradley Walsh is already called Bradley Walsh and there can only ever be one Bradley Walsh.
But a name is not just a logo or a trademark.
Our names mark out our worlds, private and public, the degrees of closeness between ourselves and other people: family, friends, and acquaintances. Names define intimacy.
In the Bible, God sometimes gives new names to people he loves. Sarai becomes Sarah. Jacob becomes Israel.
And in their stories, these new names mark a new intimacy, the intimacy of being not only loved but truly known.
And the names we acquire in our own stories, given by our families, friends and lovers do the same, no matter how nonsensical.
They are the opposite of famous, the opposite of well known. But they are the ultimate in being known well. And I reckon that to be known well by someone who loves us is to be known as well as we’ll ever need.
Bradley Walsh, Will Young and Supergrass.
The image above is a detail from a parcel-gilt silver plate made for Queen Elizabeth I c.1567 and decorated by an engraver known as P.M. with Abraham and Sarah’s Journey through Canaan to Egypt (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). It is one of a set of twelve, all decorated with images taken from a contemporary concordance to the Bible.