ON BIRTHDAYS AND NAME DAYS

            Nomina sunt consequential rerum is a favorite dictum of the medieval Italian poet Dante, whose words have been the focus of much of my scholarly life.  The Latin phrase translates into English as “Names are the consequences of things.”  The thought runs this way:  “If people naturally call a woman Maria, then it must be because she is pure like the Virginia Mary; if a Hispanic lad is called Jesus, he will grow up to be like the Lord.”  The saying stresses the intimate connection between names and who one really is.

Since today (March 8th) is my birthday, I’ve been reflecting all day about when I was born and why I was given the name I was given.  At the time it was a virile, stately, and rugged name for a boy baby.  It recalled the name of President James Madison and Madison Square Garden, where boxing matches were held every Saturday night and broadcast across the country.  Now, ever since the movie Splash came out and the blonde mermaid chose “Madison” as her name, it has proven a much more popular name for girl babies.  Fortunately I’m mature enough not to experience a gender identity crisis every time I encounter a post-Splash young woman named Madison, but I must admit it’s still a bit disconcerting to see someone wearing a skirt and responding to my name at the same time….

Most Americans celebrate their birthday each year with lots of hoopla, including cards that sing songs and gag gifts such as one I received this week.  It was a book entitled The Joys of Getting Older by Thomas and Cindy Senior.  When I opened the $4.99 paperback, I found that all the pages were blank.  (It took a second for the gray cells to connect, but I got the joke—including the pseudonym of the authors.)  In any event, birthday celebrations in this country are done in a variety of ways but usually with family and friends, parties and games, cake and ice cream.  What is more important, the celebration transpires on the day that marks the anniversary of one’s birth.  Often little time is left for quiet meditation.

In Catholic countries such as Italy, however, the traditional day of annual celebration falls (or used to fall) on one’s onomastico—on the day associated with one’s personal saint or the saint for whom one was named.  For example, if my given name were Patrizio (Patrick), everyone would know that my onomastic celebration would be on March 17th, which is St. Patrick’s Day.  Traditional calendars listed the name of a male or female saint on each day of the year; therefore, one did not need to ask when anyone’s annual celebration would take place.  If your friend’s name was Giovanni Battista, it would be on the day celebrating the nativity of John the Baptist (June 24, six months before Christmas).  The rise of American culture in Italy (spread following World War II through films) and the country’s increasing secularism, marching in lockstep with the decline of Catholic influence, has led to a shift in this wonderful Italian tradition.  Today there is a preference for celebrating one’s birth day rather than one’s onomastic day.  Nevertheless the notion of using one day a year to reflect on one’s name and the significance of the life represented by that name continues with many families.  Often a prayer would be offered to one’s name saint.

As one in love with Italian culture, I reflect each year on my birthday not only on the events of the previous year (its highs and lows, successes and failures, family births and deaths, goals achieved and not) but also on the arc of my life to date.  When the year in question is one of the so-called “significant birthdays” (e.g., 25th, 30th, 35th, 40th, 50th, etc.), I focus on the previous five-year or ten-year period in comparison to earlier lustrums or decades.  I also think about my father, whose name was also Madison and who waited until he was 65 years old to produce his one and only son.  Yes, you read that right.  It’s not a typo.  My father was in his sixty-sixth year when I was born.  His own father, who chose the name Madison because it was his father-in-law’s name, was born prior to the start of the Civil War or, as they call it in Lexington, the War of Northern Aggression.  My name has a very l-o-n-g and venerable family tradition.

So what I do I think about on this particular birth-day?  I am grateful, first of all, that I’m not about to become a father at age 65 (as did my own father) but that I have three adorable grandchildren to watch over, one of whom carries on my family name as his middle name.  Second, I am thankful that I chose to become a teacher, one who gets to discuss with students why “names are the consequences of things” has dramatic implications for the rest of a child’s life.  (Just think of the lyric from the Billy Cash song A Boy Named Sue:  “I tell ya, life ain’t easy for a boy named ‘Sue’”!)  Third, I relish the fact that I was reared on or close to a farm and that I learned to work hard for anything I wanted, including an education.  Chopping cotton for 75 cents an hour surely was not fun at the time, but it makes for some great stories a few decades after the fact about the value of perseverance.  Finally, I’m glad that the filters or lenses through which I see myself reach far beyond that of any one name or epithet or adjective.  I have come to the realization that we can greatly influence our outlook by the handles we choose to apply to ourselves:  son or daughter, father or mother, brother or sister, religious or irreligious, angry or contented, happy or sad, peacemaker or war monger, transparent or opaque, candid or insincere, positive or negative, and so on.

For the truth is this: each one of us chooses, psychologically and emotionally, the lenses through which we view ourselves.  We brand ourselves by the words we adopt to describe who we are, whether expressed aloud or kept locked away in our minds.  On this birthday I’ve come to the conclusion that just as “names are the consequences of things,” so “things [how we view our core selves] are the consequences of names [that we assign to ourselves].”  That’s why we all are touched when the “colored maid” in Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help tells the little white girl to remember, “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”  We are moved to tears because we know, deep down, that words (and names) matter, especially those we assign to (or elect to accept for) ourselves.