Read Kate’s latest for The Tablet – Never forget the fundamental importance of names.
How many people in your congregation at church can you say hello to, by name? How many of the people that you make the sign of peace towards, week by week?
We smile at so many people; we have known them for years; I have no idea what most of their names are, and I don’t think I am at all unusual in this. For a few I could hazard a guess between three or four names I have seen written on various newsletters at church, but I don’t actually know which is which. And it’s really difficult to ask, especially if you’re British, once you’ve got to this stage in a relationship, because everyone assumes that they will pick names up at a much earlier stage, so you feel that you’ve let the side down somehow. Of course I know the names of my choir and a few of the other church musicians in our parish, but partly because those are names I have seen written down, which really helps. And of course, everyone knows the priest’s name, but he is the one person where it doesn’t matter so much!
Names are important, we all assume, but in fact you don’t need them in conversation most of the time, especially if you have eye contact. It’s perfectly possible, as we all know, to go on for years without addressing someone by name, but you can’t talk about them, or refer to them with any ease or certainty that both people in the current exchange actually mean the same person. In a family, if no one knows a particular name, you may even end up with a pet name or descriptor of someone, if you refer to them often enough in conversation, but you wouldn’t ever be able to convert that into a direct address if you needed one. For example, the other place where similar conditions apply is my swimming pool, where there are two people known to me as Coral-bikini and Snorkelman. Those labels are convenient, but no substitute for a name. And it doesn’t bother me at the swimming pool, but it does at church.
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