Setting: around a campfire in the dark woods. JOHN has wandered in on DOYLE’s campfire, needing respite from the dark. He introduces himself.
John: I’m John.
Doyle: God is gracious.
John: Sorry?
Doyle: That’s your name’s meaning: ‘John’ means ‘God is gracious.’
John: Oh, I always joked that ‘John’ was slang for a toilet and my last name was Gaelic for ‘Brown,’ so my name was really just Toilet, brown.
Doyle: Oh but you mustn’t say things like that where names are concerned. Have you ever considered what our names actually are?
John: Uh, I guess random guttural noises we made up to refer to one another.
Doyle: But that’s not entirely true, is it? Take my name for example, it means ‘Dark Stranger.’ How providential is that? I often wondered what my name prophesied, and here we are: in the dark and I am a stranger to you. How about that? I am a stranger most to myself, I suppose is the deeper meaning.
John: Sorry, I’m not following you.
Doyle: But of course, sorry. So take it this way: my name is Doyle. Do you know where that name comes from? It’s Irish (if your name is Gaelic too we might be long-lost cousins! Hmm, maybe not a dark stranger then, after all.) But the original word was not how I say and pronounce it, it was actually Dubhghaill which meant ‘Dark Stranger.’ Over time it shifted to my current name. But the name is the same even if your ‘guttural noises’ shifted. So what’s in a name? It seems not what we actually say but what we actually mean. Take your name, for example: John. Do you know where it comes from? It’s biblical! Read the Gospel of Luke: Zechariah and his wife St. Elizabeth were old and couldn’t have children until St. Gabriel the angel appeared to Zacharriah and prophesied it. Zecheriah didn’t believe him and was struck mute. Later when Elizabeth gave birth and wanted to name her child John (you might know him better as the St. John the Baptist) because the Angel declared that should be his name. But people protested until Zechariah wrote “his name is John.” Interesting, right? But did Zechariah wrote J-O-H-N, or if you’re a Jonathon- are you a Jonathon? No? Nevermind. Did he write your name as you know it? No! He didn’t even use a phoenician-inspired alphabet! And did St. James or Jesus call St. John the Apostle ‘John?’ By no means! They would have called him something closer to ‘Yuhanon’ or possibly it was ‘Henna’ or ‘Hanna’ or ‘Ewan.’ Hmmmm, I’m not sure which. But your name is an excellent example, because there are so many ways to compose it! John with an H, or Jon without an H, or Sean and all its spellings, Ivan, Ewan, Johannes, Giovanni, Juan, Ian, Eoin or Yahya. They are all different, but all the same name!”
John: I’ve never thought about it that way.
Doyle: Well think of it this way! Do we call St. John the Baptist or St. John the Apostle by their Aramaic names? By no means! We call them their English names, just as the Spanish call them by their Spanish names, and all creatures of all tongues call them by their local tongue. Jesus was not called Jesus, but his name was Yeshua. Still, we can call him Jesus and the name has his power, because his name, or at least that name of his, is ‘God saves.’ Or take St. Peter. We know what his name means: it means “Rock.” Well, why do we call him Peter, then, when Jesus said his name was Cephas? Because his name was the meaning of the word Cephas, so when it was written in Greek, they used the word Petras, meaning “Rock” and we derived the word Peter from it. Curious how we don’t call them what they called themselves: no their names must be something deeper.”
John: But I can’t go to Mexico and tell people my name is Juan.
Doyle: True, but that may be more because to complete strangers you may not appear to be the meaning of your name, but someone who is trying to culturally appropriate their language. Of course, you can think of words like how Plato did- or maybe it was Socrates, who knows? But he said that words are made up of different pieces- your ‘guttural noises’ but really this is comparable to how objects can be made of different things but still be made into the same object. He used the image of sword: whether it was bronze or steel, it was still a sword. Whether you’re John or Sean, you’re still ‘God is gracious.’ Are you an Aristotelian? He’d say the material cause are your phonemes, but the formal cause of words is their true essence.
The two sit silently listening to the fire. JOHN realizes what an odd conversation this was to have as a means of meeting a stranger in the woods.