Nov 29, 2011
What’s in a name . . . ?
I am still scared to say it.
My secret name.
My name that belongs to every other woman who received her endowments on the day I received my endowments . . . my name that isn’t sacred or even, really, special . . . only . . .
Names are weird things.
They can give you power — I used to think about this when I was a missionary. No-one got to know my name, but I always jumped right in to calling everyone else by their first name: “What is your name? Sue, (You don’t mind if we call you Sue, do you? Great!) Sue, what do you know about God? . . .” An investigator, who was just out of rehab, insisted that we go by our first names with her. ”That’s what we do in group and I like it better,” she’d say. But it was so uncomfortable. Suddenly we were on a level playing field with her. There is a reason why they call our missionaries, “Elder.” They may not be old and wise, but they’ve got the name!
Of course names can also cause trouble — as with my husband and I when I was pregnant with our first. For nine months we argued (or completely ignored the topic) because I hated his name choices (like a chorus of girls I knew in high school: Jessica and Amy and Jennifer and Tonya) and he couldn’t stand mine (too weird or too old-fashioned: Philippa and Rose and Penelope). It wasn’t until after I had given birth (and he had watched me giving birth) and we had held our daughter for a while, that he gave in and let me choose (the perfect) name: Rose Philippa. I think it was big of him to let me choose because he isn’t completely happy with his own name.
I am very happy with mine. Maybe that is why I think names have power as well. I was named for (depending on the story) either Ben Hur’s leperous sister or some long-gone Relief Society sister whose name my mother found in some old papers in my grandmother’s house. Either way, at 13 the patriarch who gave me my blessing pointed out that my name was actually from the Bible. A little research and I soon discovered that there was much more to the Bible, and much more to my name, than I had ever imagined.
Tierza (Tirzah in the KJV) is the name of one of Zelophehad’s five daughters. These fabulous feminists were furious when their father died and, having no sons, all of his inheritance passed to his brothers and not to them. Instead of weeping or complaining, these women went straight to Moses and demanded their fair share. Moses asked God and God answered Moses . . . and, of course, the women were right! It wasn’t a perfect victory (the women only inherit if there are no men in the way, and the menfolk soon started griping that there inheritance would get lost to other tribes if these girls went off and got married, so it was declared that they had to marry within their own tribe) but still. Right in our very Bible is a rarely told story of women standing up for themselves and God standing up for them in turn.
Much later Tirzah is the name of the capitol of the Northern Kingdom (the wicked kingdom . . . you know, Jezebel and all them folks). Apparently it was quite the place. In the Song of Solomon the male voice croons to his lover: “Thou art beautiful, oh my love, as Tirzah . . .” (He goes on to compare her to an army with banners and I’m not certain my heart would leap up if my lover compared me to, say, New York City, but still, it is a nice verse . . .)
So you can see why I like my name.
I like it a lot.
I like my other name too, actually.
In a weird twist of fate (or maybe it was meant to be) I got a meaningful secret name too, one that had meaning for me even before it was given to me in the temple.
Maybe that is why I don’t want to share it.
Or maybe I am scared, still, and a little superstitious.
It just seems strange to me . . . I mean, after all, what’s in a name?