By Libertatem Hortus
Names are powerful. In celtic folklore if you told a fey your name it would have power over you, or steal your name. In the modern era, while fey aren’t as much of a problem, we have two problems regarding names. The power and importance of which is still in effect.
In the 1980s A&W the company released their ⅓ pound burger to compete with McDonald’s ¼ burger. However, A&W found they were losing the battle. After researching the cause they found that people thought their burger was smaller due to believing that the ¼ pound burger was bigger, despite the opposite being true. While most have laughs this off, mentioning how dumb people are, it brings an immportant point into view, names matter.
While the rivalry between A&W and McDonald’s is a pretty trivial thing in the long run, both companies are still around and doing fairly well. That said, the power of names hasn’t always been utilized. Take Black Lives Matter, while its name is great, and is indeed very true, it makes the organization out to be something fighting for civil rights, which while partially true, leads people to overlook or ignore its more violent actions. It’s bad enough that its been labeled a terrorist organization by a police training guide, and said to he a high threat by Intelegence Fusion, a global organization that gathers information for security. While Black Lives Matter isn’t the only organization that has done this, it is a prominent example of this.
While the use of names has allowed some to make themselves seem innocent, another issue with names has been the overuse of them. When is the last time you heard of someone being called a Nazi. Recently in international news Putin called the defenders of Ukrain “Neo-Nazis”, which just isn’t true. And Putin isn’t the only one who has done this recently either. Pretty much everywhere you look you can find names being thrown around like Nazis, just about all of which have very little founding in reality. What this does is make names and titles like Nazis lose their actual meaning. It turns from the name of a horrific organization that did unspeakably terrible things, and makes it mean anyone someone disagrees with.
While there isn’t any real solution for the second problem outside of not participating in it, there is a solution to the first. That solution is to educate yourself. Because while names are a very powerful thing, their power comes from the perception around them, you can choose to ignore the false perfume on fake roses, and look at it yourself. So while Shakespear might disagree with this statement, a rose by any other name would smell less sweet, simply because what makes a rose smell sweet is our perception of it. So the solution to this is simple. Found in a two thousand year old book, “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” Mathew 7;16, the Bible.
