What IS in a Name, Anyway?
My mother’s given name was Esther. It was an honor for her at the time to have been named after her maternal grandmother but Esther is a name that fell out of popularity somewhere along the way, along with lots of others. Some of those names have made a comeback. There might be a trend with gemstones because I know of a child named Pearl and another named Ruby. Maybe they’re family names enjoying a second life. I also know children named Evelyn and Alice, both lovely names that had fallen out of favor for a while. I hadn’t met an Esther for a long time but lately ran into two of them. One was a friendly thirty-something woman who was walking her dog in our neighborhood. The other was a checker at Safeway a few weeks ago. I looked at her name tag and said something like, “Esther! That was my mother’s name.” Not of any particular interest to her. And yet, like Elizabeth Warren in a different situation a few years ago, I persisted. “Are you named after someone specific?” I asked her. “Someone in the Bible, I guess,” she said. She was fairly clueless but I was determined. “You know, a lot of people consider the Esther in the Bible to have been pretty much of a badass,” I informed her. “Whatever,” she shrugged. I left, feeling a little deflated yet secretly happy to be more informed than she apparently cared to be. On the corner leaving the parking lot and heading into the street was a person who appeared to be one of the unhoused men who frequents that spot. Instead of standing with a sign, he was sitting on the curb, surrounded by bunches of crows and pigeons. He looked like he didn’t have much himself but he was sharing and I smiled. He grinned and gave me a big thumbs up. I thought about stopping to ask if he knew the origin of HIS name but after considering it more, decided not to do that.
Photo courtesy twarezak at Pixabay.com
