WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

Have you counted how many times you have been asked this same question? How many times have you announced that one word, the strange combination of letters that introduces you as a separate creature?

Do you need your name?

Why does the human being keep naming everything that surrounds him? We stitch few sounds together and create a new way to point and recognize something.   When you start thinking about your own name, which you share with thousands and in the case of the name Anna, millions of others, the most important word that follows you wherever you go suddenly loses all its seriousness and meaning.

I look at the forest and see it from above. I see trees and I name them pine trees. The three-symboled word combines, describes and realizes the whole idea of a pine tree forest. But I wish I could get out of the language system, free my mind from the endless game of symbolizing and recognizing things and try to see each tree separately; find all the branches that differ from one tree to another; notice even the lightest contrasts of the leaves; measure the length of the roots that flow underneath my feet and break their way to the heart of the earth.

My name is Anna: The laziest name in the world. Creating it required no creativity and no intellectual effort. Two letters, two sounds and it even stays the same when you read it backward. Google says it means “kindness,” loyalty,” “grace” blah, blablah, and blablablah. But for me, it is just another word like ‘pine’ that covers the muddy twisted roots and distracts from noticing the irregular curves of the branches.