Names matter. Family names matter because they tell a rich history and point to the deep bonds between parents and children. But first names point to an even deeper truth.
As German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper argued in his essay What is My Real Name? that explores the concept of identity and the relationship between a person’s name and their fundamental selfhood:
“The Church appears to regard a person’s first name, which he receives at baptism and which in English is known as his ‘Christian name’, as a more essential name, a name which designates the person more profoundly, than his family name.”
This “essential” quality that each person has was recently highlighted in the new papal document Dignitas Infinita, as well as in the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales’ document Intricately Woven by the Lord that was released shortly afterward.
When a baby is born, for the first few months of that baby’s life relations and friends will think of that individual as “the” baby, the newest addition to one particular family. To strangers, this new addition to humanity will be simply “a” baby, nearly undistinguishable from any other infant.
But to God, that newborn is as much a formed individual now, with a unique body and soul, as he or she will appear to others later in life, once that individual’s personality is better developed. Before anyone else does, even before our own parents, God knows us and calls us by name. As He says to His nation of Israel: “I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1).
Our “Christian” name, then, is so crucial to our identity precisely because, if our surnames link us permanently to our family, then our first name points to God’s recognition of – and unconditional love for – every single one of us.
Yet this recognition often goes ignored in our post-Christian society. The popularisation of gender theory has come with the built-in assumption that the best cure for dysphoria is gender-affirming care. This doesn’t only mean resorting to hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery; in many cases concerning children and young people, it also involves parents, teachers, and peers accepting the individual’s new chosen name and pronouns. Calling someone by their new name, so the logic goes, is the ultimate expression of trust and love.
Dignitas Infinita invites Catholics across the world to resist the kind of gender theory that gives rise to such logic, while Intricately Woven by the Lord provides guidance about how we should deal with the gender ideology in daily life, highlighting the issue of language use, suggesting:
“Our choice of words is always to be assessed in the complex situation of social interaction. Sensitivity and a desire to show respect are important. We should never seek to cause offence to another, including in situations where the other person advocates a view of reality that is different from or departs from the Church’s vision of the human person. Yet care should be taken to resist the temptation to adopt the language of gender ideology in our institutions.”
Although pronouns and first names are not explicitly mentioned, it is clear that the bishops are urging us not to alter our language in Catholic institutions. Schools in particular, though recognising the importance of being tactful, should not capitulate to progressive demands on this issue. Of course, it’s perfectly normal for young people to want to make a new identity for themselves. Many teenagers are acutely uncomfortable in their own bodies, so it is understandable that some would keenly wish to change aspects of their identity.
This is a problem, of course, because it ignores the fact that men and women are biologically different. For Christians, however, the idea of giving yourself a new name should be seen as particularly harmful, because it is a distorted version of the practice of adopting a new name when entering religious life. Our Christian name given at baptism points beyond our family history to God’s love and foreknowledge of us from eternity, and his constant care of us from the moment we begin to exist. In the case of those who enter religious life, the new name they take signals that they have answered a vocation from God to live a certain state of life, and thus deepen their baptism. It’s a decision to become even more dead to their worldly selves and to live as members of Christ’s body: “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).
By receiving a new name in religious life, then, they show even more that their identities are received from God, redeemed in Christ, and refashioned to serve others through the grace given by the Holy Spirit. So Saul of Tarsus became Paul, and Simon son of Jonah became Peter.
On the other hand, when people give themselves a new name as a way to create a new identity from scratch, they reject the idea that their human nature was given to them by their Creator, and instead see themselves as being limitlessly malleable according to their wishes and desires. Taking on a new name after “transitioning” from one sex to the other is a denial of God’s recognition of each of us – formalised in the sacrament of baptism – as unrepeatable individuals, inherently valuable in the very bodies and souls that have been given us by Him.
As Dignitas Infinita reminds us: “Human dignity cannot be based on merely individualistic standards, nor can it be identified with the psychophysical well-being of the individual.” This is why, although we should treat young people in schools who are struggling with gender identity with the utmost care and compassion, Catholic schools cannot compromise on language. Rather, we need to constantly remind ourselves that accepting our given names is part of recognising our created nature and the dignity bestowed upon us by our Creator.
By way of reinforcing this, the Church finds an unlikely ally in Greta Gerwig, the director of the 2017 film Lady Bird. For the best part of two hours we watch Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson fight with her mother as she tries to build an identity for herself. This includes her insisting on calling herself “Lady Bird” – rather than Christine – leaving behind her hometown of Sacramento, California, and her all-girls Catholic high school, for an exciting new life “with culture” as a university student in New York.
When Lady Bird goes to her first college party in New York, she meets a boy, a teenager straight out of high school like herself, who tells her that he doesn’t believe in God. It’s clear that Lady Bird is stung by how smug he is in his confidence that God doesn’t exist and as she starts to wrestle with her own doubts about the path she has chosen: “People will call each other by names their parents made up for them, but they don’t believe in God,” Lady Bird replies, shaking her head.
For someone who’s never publicly called herself a Christian, Gerwig shows her sensibilities to be surprisingly Catholic. In creating Christine/Lady Bird, Gerwig gives us an example of a young woman rediscovering her faith through the very relationship that her parents established by their naming of her. Crucially, what Lady Bird also realises in this scene, is that having faith in one’s relationship with God is no more irrational than having faith in one’s relationship with one’s parents, no matter what secular society would have us believe.
At that same college party, Lady Bird gets so drunk that her friends take her to the nearest hospital. When she wakes up the next morning, stumbling onto the streets of New York, she realises it’s Sunday. She sees people entering a church and joins in with the rest of the congregation. It is only then that she plucks up the courage to call her parents, and finally accepts the name chosen for her by her parents.
In the final scene of the film, clearly homesick, she leaves a voice message for her parents: “Hi, Mom and Dad, it’s me, Christine,” we hear her saying on the phone. “It’s the name you gave me. It’s a good one.”
God calls us by name, as humans first and foremost, but as embodied men and women, too. By naming us, our parents recognise our dignity as individuals. This is but an earthly version of God’s perfect knowledge of us, but it’s a recognition that does point us towards God’s perfect love for each human being he’s created. Christian names are important; let’s do our best to preserve them and cherish them.
Photo: Newborn baby; by Frank Alarcon on Unsplash.
Beatrice Scudeler writes on literature, religion, the arts, and the family. Her published work can be found here. She tweets at @beatrixscudeler.
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