What's in a Name?

        On the first day of 2nd grade, our entire class was subjugated to one of those embarrassingly anti-social icebreakers. Despite having nearly no memories of 2nd grade, this one still distinctly sticks out in my head from how terribly dry this icebreaker was. The gimmick of this one was to put an adjective that started with the same letter as your first name before your name.

        This was difficult for me in particular, because how many good adjectives are there that start with R? I think I eventually decided on " ๋࣭  ࣪ ˖❇ ๋࣭  ࣪˖⊹ ࣪Radical Ryan ๋࣭  ࣪ ˖❇ ๋࣭  ࣪ ˖⊹ ࣪" or something, but the adjective itself isn't what's really important.

        What always bothered me about this icebreaker, even at the mental capacity of a 2nd grader, was that it indirectly implied my name didn't carry its own meaning. Does the name "Ryan" not automatically carry the meaning of "Radical"? Why do I need to add an adjective to my name? Isn't it just a part of my identity as "Ryan" to begin with?

        This 2nd grade annoyance has festered inside me over the years into realizing something important. Icebreakers suck. But the second most important thing it made me realize is that names don't actually carry any meaning of their own.

        See my name of "Ryan" doesn't actually describe my identity. Sure, it's the umbrella that all parts of who I am fall under, but it's not really something that describes me. When I was first born and named "Ryan", it's not like all of my characteristics and traits were decided right there and then by my name. I had to develop my personality and character, and then that would give me something that could be described with an adjective. So, when I picked out a matching adjective to my name, I was trying to describe and define who I was because my name alone couldn't do that.

        Even though my name contains the person I am and the things I had to describe with an adjective, the name "Ryan" itself doesn't actually describe the person I am. "Ryan" itself doesn't mean "radical" or "radiant" or whatever, I had to develop my own identity and then describe that with an adjective because "Ryan" itself doesn't describe a person.

        In reality, a name hardly describes a person on its own. It carries no meaning over that person or their personality, they grow that part of themselves and then describe it their own way. Names don't contain any meaning that can describe a person, but they also don't contain any meaning that can define a person either. This can be reinforced with another one of my unbeloved conversation topics.

        See, another dreaded conversation that I loathe nearly as much as icebreakers is the topic of "what does your name mean?" This is because while names don't have any meanings that describe a person, they do have definitions or translations that explain what they stand for or mean. While names don't have meanings in the sense of adjectives that describe a person, they do have meanings in the sense of definitions that define what that name means. However, I still really hate this conversation, even more than an icebreaker.

        Like, first off, everyone knows you don't actually care that my name means "Great Blue" or something in Latin because why would the direct meaning of a name matter to anyone besides the beholder of the name? Secondly, why does it even matter nowadays, all of these name meanings are in ancient and dead languages that no one will use, so why does knowing what they translated to in their original language matter when no one uses the original language? Lastly, why would the direct meaning of someone's name actually define their own person, being known as "Peace Flower" doesn't change how you view that person or how they behave at all. Someone's name can translate to "Peace Flower”, and it won't change the fact that they're confrontational or that you think they're confrontational. These conversations are so worthless and add nothing. They are the linguistic equivalent of olive oil in cooking. 

        However, there is an additional reason for me to hate this conversation topic, and it's the fact that my name has no actual meaning. So, whenever it comes my turn to share the meaning of one's name, it goes a little something like this:

        Person A: "Oh, Ryan! What does your name mean?"

        Me: "I don't know, it's just Ryan."

        Yeah, it's a real nice way to seem like a party pooper because I didn't play along with the conversation topic, even though I literally had nothing to say, Ms. Neen! And sure, I can look up "meaning of Ryan" on the Internet and find some result telling me it means "Little King", but I'm not quite sure of the credibility of a site named "Mama Natural". And even if my name does legitimately mean something, does it matter?

        Like, maybe if it translated to something really cool like "Godslayer Catalyst", then I would obviously care to tell people what it translates to. But as it stands, even if my name did legitimately translate into something, I don't see how that would impact me.

        This goes back to my last reason for hating this conversation in general, the meaning of my name obviously does not correspond with my personality or behavior, and the idea that my name having a direct meaning translates to a direct meaning on my person is obviously incorrect. There being a definition to my name wouldn't change or define the person I actually am, so why does the definition even exist? If "Ryan" does actually have a defined meaning as "Little King", that doesn't automatically define me as a king. This just being combined with the fact that my name doesn't even seem to have an officially proper meaning makes the entire thing even stupider for me.

        Now, if you've made it this far, you've probably read through all my ranting and are starting to wonder something among the lines of:  "Ok Ryan, so meanings of names are stupid and putting adjectives before a name is stupid, so how do we give names meanings in an acceptable way?"

        We don't.

        Names are really just words or combinations of letters at the end of the day, there's nothing really special about the word "Ryan" from "couch" in any linguistic sense besides using different characters. The only difference in any word is really its definition, and because names are individual and personalized to their beholders, they obviously have different definitions for every person who uses it. It's how society can have both Jack Frost, the funny and likable snowman, and Jack the Ripper, the infamous the serial killer. Jack is the same word throughout both cases, it's just the definition we associate with it depends on the person.

        Names are different from every other part of language in that they have multiple definitions or meanings depending on the person instead of a universal one for everyone. Not only is Ryan being defined as "Little King" not going to determine or define a-person-who-is-named-Ryan's behavior, it's not even going to define every Ryan. Not every Ryan is going to be a "Little King" or every Sarah will be a "Princess" because there are literally a finite amount of monarchies in the world.

        This can be shown with the difference between the Ryan who was here 3 years before me and captain of the football team, meanwhile I have been blessed with 0 athletic ability and participate in Film Club. Unless we say all people with the same name act the same, which is obviously untrue because every human is unique, a name cannot even define everyone with that name. This is because then they would all be the same since they were defined the same way, but they're not, so clearly some ancient meaning of a name defining someone is obviously incorrect.

        The key thing about people's names is that not only do they not describe a person because they contain no descriptive adjective to describe that person with, and they don't define a person either because their definitions don't automatically influence or match the person who has that name. Mixed in with the fact that the same name is given to multiple different people, and it's impossible for one name to instantly mean something to a person who has it. Being named "Ryan" doesn't make me "Radical" or a "Little King" or like any other person named Ryan out there.

        Words are just combinations of letters at the end of the day, their definitions/descriptions/meanings only exist because we designated them with it. There is nothing actually violent about the letters that make up the word "attack", we just gave it a violent definition and connotation. It's the same thing for a name, it's really just a jumbled mess of consonants, a blank slate that only has a meaning because we give it one. And while people can try to attach descriptions/definitions/meanings to names to try and determine who someone is just by knowing their name, the only meaning a name can have - and also the only one that truly matters - is the one you give it.