What's in a name?

A friend of mine from church recently came back from a year-long trip to England, where she was doing some training and such. Tonight, she was talking about her experiences over there, and some of the things that really made an impact on her. One of the things that came up was the importance of your name, which I thought I'd pick up on.

In Bible times, names were all quite carefully thought out. They all had meanings to them, and you knew the meaning. They were quite specific to you. When you introduced yourself, you were pretty much introducing a description of you. For example, imagine introducing yourself as 'beautiful,' if your name was Belinda. (That's the meaning of that name.) It seems a bit weird, these days, but that's how it was.

And, of course, then you can get into last names, and how they came about. And you get things like Smith, and -son, and -vic or -vich, etc etc. But I think I've already done a post on that, so I'll leave that to the side for now.

If you look at names these days, though, a whole different meaning is there. You don't just have your first name. You have nicknames as well. Maybe a cool version of your name, or a gangster version, a Star Wars version, an upper class version, a short version, a long version. Maybe you've changed your name, because you didn't like the one you were given. I've known people who haven't particularly been fond of their names, for various reasons. Sometimes because of the people who gave them the name, sometimes because it's been butchered a million times over, sometimes because they're tired of having to spell it for people every single time. (I don't bother telling people it's spelled with an 'a', these days. Still got people who spell it with an 'o'.) And that can complicate things.

I, for example, have a number of different nicknames (I believe I posted them earlier for a different post, I'll just go and retrieve them);  Bren, B, B-Ray, B-Dog, Brenno, Brendobags, Brendo, Dexter, Dex, Gold-digger, Shadow, Stingray, Piano Man, Balloon Boy, Bleeker, and Fogel. Some of those have various backstories/connotations when I hear them (if you're wondering where on earth some of them came from, this is the original post: http://modnarama.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/surveyifising.html), which may be positive or negative. Or neither, maybe. A few don't really have much of a slant. And there's probably a few that I've missed.

Take a look, however, at my actual full name: Brendan James Raymond.
The Raymond is fairly self-explanatory. From my Dad's family and such. Goes back a fair way - apparently the Raymond name goes back to England, and if you trace it back even further, to France. Raimont or something by then, I'd guess.
James is a middle name that's been used a bit in my family before (can't remember which side, possibly both), and as such was also used for me.
Brendan is actually a name from an Irish saint, who made some sort of legendary sailing trip to the Isle of the Blessed, or St. Brendan's Island. (Supposedly somewhere in the Northern Atlantic; hasn't been found as of yet.) But my parents just liked the name.

Looking at the name meanings, we have; Brendan - either 'little raven' or 'prince', depending on where you look; James - apparently comes from Jacob, which as you may know from the Bible, means something like 'he who grasps the heel' (shortened to 'supplanter' on websites, it seems), though some theories apparently say it might be based off something else which would mean 'may God protect' (like that a bit more); Raymond - comes from two words that mean 'advice' and 'protector', which is sometimes put together to become a 'wise guardian'.
So, apparently, I could be a prince, blessed by the protection of God, who shall go forth and wisely protect others...
Or, a little raven, who pokes people on the heel, and squawks out some advice but nobody really listens (I'm thinking Blagden from Eldest, if you've ever read it).
Probably got bits of both in there ;) But, you know, being a romantic, of course I'm going to like the first. If I only had a set of armour....

But, of course, not just important is the words, but also how you say them. One person might call me Preacher and I quite like it, whereas someone else could call me that and I'd be somewhat annoyed. You can change the meaning of a word completely by the way that you say it. As such, perhaps said heartily - though that's probably more of a guy thing, I guess, and not even a me guy thing - OK then, sincerely. With a bit of warmth to it, if possible. And relaxed. I don't want you to sound like you're about to say that my dog's died, even if they have.

So yeah :) That's my thoughts on names. What's in your name?