What's in a name?

Here's my article for August:

As any keen pub-quizzer will tell you, the months of July and August are named after two Roman Emperors; Julius Caesar and Augustus respectively. As humans we have a habit of naming things after significant people as a way to commemorate, remember and celebrate them. When I went to New York, I was amused to find that a slipway was named after someone (they obviously weren't important enough to have a whole road named after them!). And at the farewell service for the last Bishop of Lincoln, the Dean relayed some of the great Bishops of Lincoln and the additions they made to the Cathedral. He joked that the major addition that Bishop John oversaw was a new toilet block, suggesting that maybe they should name it after him!

Naming things after people is not always without controversy, especially commemorations we've inherited from previous ages. Colston Hall in Bristol is to be re-named because of the Bristolian slave trader Sir Edward Colston. Oxford University has recently resisted pressure from campaigners to remove statues, paintings and commemorations of Cecil Rhodes and other colonialists. Liverpool also resisted an attempt to re-name all of the streets associated with slave traders, as this would have meant renaming most of Liverpool's most famous streets, including Penny Lane!

This desire to re-name can spring from a laudable desire to recognise the parts of our history that by today's standards are regrettable, but they can also be seen as an attempt to airbrush history. The counter argument is that, as George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Whether we like it or not, our history, both good and bad, makes us who we are and our mistakes should be remembered so that we remember not to repeat them.

Very few people will ever have anything public named after them, which for most of us is a relief! The public scrutiny that comes with public recognition is not something that most of us would like. In our day-to-day lives we can often get away with 'airbrushing' our past and our present, hiding those bits of which we're ashamed or those bits we know others would disapprove of. Both Mark Twain and Arthur Conan Doyle claim the urban legend of sending friends or upright citizens a telegram saying “Flee at once - all is discovered” and some or all of the recipients leaving immediately! The story rings true because all of us have things we'd rather others didn't know about us. And worryingly in this age of social media, our mistakes can become widely known within hours!

Even if we can hide our skeletons from those around us, God knows everything about us and one day we too will see the whole of our lives; the good, the bad and the ugly. Yet the amazing thing is that despite knowing all about us God still loves us! And more than that he wants us to say sorry for the bad things, and in his mind they will be airbrushed out so that we can start again.