What’s your Name?

At my work I get to meet many people very briefly every morning. One of the latest is a man who seemed to respond to my special sense of humour and so the other day I decided to ask him his name, seeing that we ”Chat” every morning. When he told me his name, I had trouble believing him, as I had a mental stereotype in my head of people called Andréa.

Firstly if not French, they would obviously be foreigners, and certainly tall and dark and if not handsome certainly Sauvé and sophisticated. Well my new friend is none of those things.

Anyway today when I spoke to him, I told that I had trouble believing that his name was Andréa and He stunned me when he said, “And I can’t believe my parents called me Andréa in the first place.”

This led me to thinking, not just about the names we give our children, but also of the other quirks and habits that we pass on to our children and others, either intentionally or unintentionally.

I am not talking about the good things that we wish to pass onto them and others but the not so good things that we say and do. Remembering that some of the things we do, like naming our children, last all their lives, how much care do we take with what we are passing on to others?

I am still thinking through this, so what’s your thoughts on the matter? Walter