Shake your shame name
Breaking free isn’t easy, but God sees and knows you
“My name has a story to tell, but the main character isn’t here,” writes Latina poet America Luna. “My name has the definition of dreams and opportunities within my family. It’s a reminder of my parent’s dreams and hard work. It’s a remembrance of the person I love and hate the most.”
Every name tells a story. Your name can tell you from whom you’ve come and where you’re from. My last name is Taylor. It goes back to some sort of Scots-Irish ancestry, at least as far as anyone could figure. My aunt used to say that her extensive research through the branches of our family tree revealed, for better or worse, we are related to a former president named Zachary, who was the last commander in chief to own slaves while holding office.
Not all names and the stories they tell are created equal. Sometimes names defame. They remind us that we’d do anything to forget from whom we’ve come and where we’re from. These shame names have a way of seeping into the soul and sabotaging our dignity and worth. Insidiously, they terrorize and torture us in a legion of ways, sucking life out of us, spinning lies we end up believing about ourselves. Breaking free from these shame names is not easy. As a young girl, a friend was told repeatedly by her alcoholic, abusive mother, “Just shut up. You’re never going to be anything but a drunk just like me!” Although she never wrote it on a name tag, the moniker embedded deep in her identity; she learned to think of herself as “A Drunk Like Your Mom.” Care to venture a guess as to what her life has been like? And what about others? Folks in African-American, Latino, Asian and Native American communities have had to endure the shame names given to them not only by individuals but by systems and structures.
Like people who live next door to you, shop at the grocery store and sit in pews with you. They live day to day with mental health and addiction challenges, courageously fighting against the burdensome weight of stigmatizing and shaming labels.
Like the millions of men, women and children incarcerated in the U.S. who have had their given names supplanted by a number.
Because names are bestowed upon us by others — family, friends, enemies, acquaintances, strangers or systems — they express how we are perceived and thus can have immense power to shape our identity and destiny. Nominative determinism or namedriven outcome is what researchers call it.
Some cultures take name-driven outcome particularly seriously.
The Nigerians have a proverb: “When a person is given a name, his gods accept it,” writes New York University professor Adam Alter. Alter goes on to say that this “explains why exhausted Nigerian parents sometimes name their children Dumaka (“help me with her hands”) or Obiageli (“one who has come to eat”).”
Not long ago I officiated the wedding of a young Nigerian man whose first name is Olisaeloka, pronounced Oh-lee-sayloka. When he was born, his overjoyed parents gave him a name that expressed the story of their great delight. In the Nigerian language of Igbo, Olisaeloka means, “God is very thoughtful!” In other words, Olisaeloka is a name that tells the story of a young man who has grown up knowing that he is a gift — God’s gift to his parents, to his people, to the world. I wonder what it would be like to live with that identity.
I told Olisaeloka that I wish I could take his name for myself sometimes, especially during seasons when I need to be reminded of the story of a God who pays attention. Come to think of it, I wish I could rename a lot of people Oleisaloka; people who live with shame names they can’t seem to shake, names that drive them to a perpetual place of loneliness and despair.
I would rename people who live thinking that God doesn’t give them a second thought, or doesn’t think of them at all, or thinks they are colossal disappointments.
Folks, like me, who need to be reminded of the story of a God who thinks very highly of them and has them in mind all the time.
I would rename people whose names remind them that they’d do anything to forget from whom they’ve come and where they’re from.
“I will call you by name,” Jesus says to those who have been known by many shame names. I suppose the name Jesus calls us is the one we recognize as holding the essence of who we are.
Perhaps the most transforming thing we can do is to give others the space to tell their dehumanizing stories of naming and then to hold those stories with compassion and gentleness. And then at some point, share an alternative narrative that goes something like this: No matter what name you’ve been given, no matter the shame name by which you’ve been tagged, God is very thoughtful to have given what may feel to you like a new name, but, I suspect, is the name by which God has always known you, as the prophet writes.
No longer do you have to carry the weight of a shame name like “A Drunk Like Your Mom” or “Crazy” or “Prisoner #1973750,” or any of the countless other names you may have been burdened with. You are invited to live a story shaped by the name God gave you when first laying eyes on you. Rev. Gregg Taylor is the pastor and community architect with Houston: reVision. Read more at meditate-this.org.