When I played at McCallie Middle School last Wednesday, I discovered another reason for an elected person to behave. I met a young man who said, “My mother named me after you.”
I was stunned and cannot even remember what I said. I think I said something like, “I hope I can live up to it.”
Imagine standing there shaking hands with a handsome, intelligent young man who has your name. It was a new and sobering experience for me.
It got me to thinking about the significance of names. There’s no telling how many children of the Depression are named “Franklin Delano” after President Roosevelt. I’ve only met one person named after Elvis, but I would guess there were millions. In the New Testament Greek, we are reminded that name and nature are synonymous terms. At some place in our consciousness, we are aware of that, and it influences what we name our children.
I wondered how many German mothers named their sons “Adolf.” After all, Hitler was a hero in his early days. He had an enviable World War I military record. The Nazis got the German economy cranked up. It was years before anyone knew the depths of the hate he harbored for the Jewish people that would lead him to experiment on and torture beautiful little Jewish children.
What did those children do whose mothers named them “Adolf”? A name is with you all your life unless you legally change it, and few do. How would you like to be named after a man who killed 6 million men, women, and children? When you meet a WWII veteran, thank him for running this monster into a hole in Berlin where he made one good decision – to end his miserable life.
Thinking back on all the chances I had to sell the power and influence the people gave me, I am so glad I didn’t do it just for that young man. I’d hate for someone to live with a name I had dragged through the mud.
I am thankful to God that my parents reminded me many times over the years, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.” Not one verse in the Bible is more true than that one.
One thing is for sure: If I ever disgrace the name my good parents gave me it will be a mistake of the head and not the heart.
One reason I loved my name from the start was because my mother heard it somewhere and liked it. I wasn’t named after anyone. She just loved the sound of it. And so have I. A few years ago my son gave me “The Book of Roberts'” with every Roberts in the world they could find. I looked and there were only two Dalton Roberts’ in the world. The other one worked for the Colorado Department of Public Health and I wrote him a letter. He called me and told me how interesting it was to get a letter with a return address of Dalton Roberts.
Frankly, I was glad he was not on Death Row.
See what I mean about the importance of names?