What's in a first name?

What's in a first name?  Quite a lot, when you stop to think about it.  In fact, if you did think about it too long you might never end up deciding on what to use. 

Would that which we call a rose really smell as sweet if it was called something else?  Or put it another way, if you went through life with a totally different name would you still be the same person.

We get no choice in what we're called.  We might have been given a name as a tribute to someone or found ourselves labelled with a whim that sounded right at the time.  Maybe it's something to make sure we stand out from the crowd - or possibly something to make sure we blend in. 

A few letters, strung together, written on a birth certificate in a handful of seconds.  And yet that one word follows us around our entire lives.  It is part of that first impression that others make of us and which we never quite shake off.  It comes to represent us to those that know us.  Just the mention of our name conjures up memories, images, thoughts, emotions.  All in the time it takes to say a word that we had no choice in picking.

And every name comes packed with meaning.  That personal meaning attached by those that know us.  The meaning of the name, too, set down in books and passed on through generations.  And the meaning it just has - the type of person it conjures up in the mind of the person hearing it.

There is perhaps no word more special to us in our lives than our first name. And I want to trace the stories of as many as I can.  Here I hope to post an evolving dictionary of first names - their meanings, their usage, their passage through time.

What's in a first name?  All of us, maybe.