What's in your name?

"A human being's name is a principal component in his person, perhaps a piece of his soul."
 - Sigmund Freud

Rev. Mark's sermon yesterday was about the question "What is your name?" Our Sunday school lesson for the middle and high scholars was focused around the same question, and it's variant, "who are you?"  As Freud observed, a name can be an integral part of self-identity, can perhaps dictate your outlook on life.  What happens if your outlook on life changes due to a near-death or other catastrophic experience?

Yesterday's biblical text was Jacob's dark night of the soul struggle with God, or one of God's representatives. The holy-ish antagonist asked Jacob, "What's your name?"  Turns out that Jacob came out with a new moniker -  Israel. Israel means "the one who has striven with God and prevailed."

I thought about that. What does my name mean, and does it represent who I am now after many dark nights of the soul?  I looked up "Laura" on ohbabynames.com and found that it was derived from the latin Laurus, meaning 'laurel', from the laurel tree and laurel leaves which were made into crowns for victors in Roman times.

Characteristics of Lauras include: authoritative, powerful, tough, tenacious, wealthy, problem-solver and achiever.  Perhaps those used to apply to me, but now I would prefer to keep 'tenacious' and 'problem-solver' and ditch the rest.The idea of picking a second name for the second half of life / post apocalyptic night of the soul seems freeing. Laura is a part of me, but I need space for something else now, something new.

After some research I came up with a short list for my new name / alter ego / nom de plum:
Viviana, ('alive' or 'living'), Skelly, ('storyteller'), and Cuentista ('storyteller' in Spanish). I'm leaning toward Skelly, which goes well with my preferred alias surname of "Keys".  If you see anything published by Skelly Keys in the future you  might drop me a line.

In other naming news, we learned over the weekend that the next niece or nephew born in my family will actually be .. . . .  a niece! My brother Michael and his lovely wife Pam are the proud parents of three gorgeous  boys - and now they get to go PINK (or yellow, or neutral, or whatever!)  We are thrilled for them and for ourselves, that we get to welcome a new baby in the summer. Now good luck finding the right names . . . .