Hagar and the Power of Naming

The Power of Naming

When he enlisted in the army toward the end of World War II, my father changed his name. A Jewish refugee from Germany, he was traumatized by and ashamed of his heritage, so perhaps that had something to do with his rejection of his birth name, yet it was also common practice back then for immigrant soldiers to change their foreign names to English ones. In any event, Karl Heinz Stiebel become Charles Harry Stevens.

Did this matter? Changing his name made it easier for him to pass as “white,” which he did. At one point, though he considered himself an atheist, he attended a Methodist church. He wanted to fit in, become part of that “melting pot,” which was expected of immigrants in the late 1930s when my father and his immediate family arrived in the United States.

Yet to change one’s name is a big thing. In the Bible, God changed people’s names to indicate something momentous. Abram’s name was changed to Abraham and Sarai’s to Sarah to indicate that they would soon be parents to Isaac, who would go on to father all the Hebrew people. Jacob became Israel because he struggled with God. These new names reflected new lives.

Becoming a Person by Taking on a Name

Among indigenous people, generally, names have power. Parents take care to choose the proper name for a child. They may use magic or prayer to help them discern the best name. Or maybe an important event during a mother’s pregnancy will suggest what to call the child. Totems, ancestors, observed behaviors of the baby itself may all be used to guide parents in their search for a name. [1]

Regardless of how the name is chosen, it confers upon the child who receives it an existence. Names can also indicate relationship. They may tell the world to whom we belong.

In her novel, And They Didn’t Die, Lauretta Ngcobo shows how this works in the lives of South African women. The name they receive at birth stays with them until they marry. After that, no one uses their given name. Instead, they become the Daughter of So and So. When they give birth to a living child, they become the Mother of So and So. From the time a woman is is married, then, she will live “her life through the identity of her father or her child.” [2]

In a similar way, women in Western cultures may give up their original surname when they marry, taking on the name of their husband and their identity as his wife. Thus names can indicate relationships and power dynamics. Sometimes they even confer or extinguish personhood.

Hagar and Personhood

The Book of Genesis tells the story of Hagar from Egypt. We first see her in Canaan as a maidservant to Sarai, the matriarch of the Hebrew people. The biblical text says nothing of her origins beyond her identity as an Egyptian, but some traditions suggest she had been an Egyptian princess, given by her father to the Hebrew couple during their stay at his palace. [3]

Though Hagar might have been respected in her homeland, once in Canaan, she had no status. Neither Sarai nor Abram called her name. Instead, they called her “slave-girl.” The young woman lost her identity as an individual person, becoming known only by her role in their household.

Taking away someone’s name makes them invisible and unimportant. Hagar would have felt that, for in ancient Egypt, if one had no name, one did not not exist. To dishonor a person, one scratched out that person’s name, as if to scratch out the individual herself.

When we use derogatory names and terms to label others, we dishonor them and ourselves. Calling someone “slave-girl” might not render her non-existent, but it would probably humiliate her. Certainly it reveals our own lack of humanity and compassion. Doug Herman, a geographer with the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, notes that the tribal names government officials came up with to replace the Natives’ own names were sometimes disparaging, similar to labeling a map of the United States, “Gringos,” and one of Mexico, “Wetbacks.” This part of our country’s history is not one to be proud of. [4]

Naming and Unnaming

So why do we call people names? It can make us feel powerful, see ourselves as better than the other, and help us bond with members of our chosen community. So we shame the homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, the impoverished, the incarcerated, the immigrant, the outcast. We ignore them or call them hurtful names, like “’paranoid,’ ‘fag,’ or ‘whore.’” [5]

The power of naming is made clear in the beginning of Genesis when Adam names all the creatures in the Garden, and God gives him dominion over them.

Someone had to name them, I suppose, for without words to describe things, how would we communicate? Indeed, how would we understand the world?

Yet can we not name something without claiming power over it? Can we not see that, while we all exist in relationship, creatures do not receive their meaning, value, or even existence because of what we call them? What we think about something does not make it what it is.

Right Understanding

In Buddhism we find the concept of Right Understanding. It’s one of the steps in the Eightfold Path. Right understanding means to see the world as it is, not as we conceive it to be. Our knowledge and ideas are not right understanding. To perceive rightly, we must let go of monikers and labels, seeing beyond them to the essence of a thing.

I think this is what Ursula K. LeGuin was getting at when she wrote “She Unnames Them.” In this story, Eve strips away the terms given to the animals by Adam. It seems that by doing so, she also strips away his power over them, for the crawling and walking and flying creatures amble away, accepting their namelessness as they have always accepted life.

As she does this, Eve also loses her name, though she does not cease to exist thereby, but rather, becomes more of what she really is. She discovers that when names no longer stand between her and the creatures, “like a clear barrier,” she feels closer to them than ever before. This scares both her and the animals. They become so close that her fear and their fear “became one same fear.” [6]

Connecting deeply, seeing clearly, can be scary. It can also make us wise. Without labels to obscure her vision, the woman who was Eve sees the world as it is rather than as she assumes or believes it should be.

Seeing One Another

Thus our names tell us who we are, define our relationships, determine who has power and who does not, and get in the way of our knowing one another. They keep us from seeing clearly.

Hagar was one who could see. She was not a paragon. She could be haughty and disrespectful. Yet, perhaps because she had lost her name, she saw God so clearly that she gave a name to Him.

The story of how this happened starts when Hagar has lived with Sarai and Abram for some years, we don’t know how many. Sarai is barren, so she conceives the idea of having a child through her slave-girl. At that time and in that place, this kind of thing was not unknown. If a slave bore a child with her mistress’s husband, the child would belong, not to the slave, but to the mistress. Therefore, Sarai gave Hagar “to her husband Abram as a wife” (Gen 16:3).

Hagar did indeed become pregnant with Abram’s child, which only served to deepen the rift between the two women. Acting superior to the childless Sarai, Hagar infuriated her mistress, who treated her harshly. The pregnant Hagar fled.

Hagar and God

When the “Angel of the Lord” finds Hagar, she is sitting by an oasis on the road to Egypt. The Angel, whom most scholars assume is God Himself, says, “Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?”

For the first time since she left home, someone calls Hagar by her name. Once again, she has an identify; she is a person. She matters.

Yet God also calls her “slave-girl,” reinforcing her position not as Abram’s wife, but as Sarai’s property. God tells her she must return to Sari and “submit to her” (Gen 16:9). Hagar may be a person, but she is not ready, yet, to be an individual.

This is not particularly unreasonable. Hagar is in the wilderness, a long way from home. She has no supplies. How will she survive the trip? Besides, she does not even know that, if she reaches Egypt, she will be welcomed.

She hadn’t thought things through before she ran away. That’s one of the things about running. We do it not because it’s reasonable, but because we can’t stand pain.

Naming God

But pain is not the end. Not for us, and not for Hagar. God reveals that Hagar was born for more than submission. Oppressed women for centuries have taken comfort in the honor God gives to this lowly slave.

God reveals that Hagar will give birth to a vast nation. “I will so greatly multiply your offspring,” He says, “that they cannot be counted for multitude” (Gen 16:10). He tells her that she will give birth to a child, and she will name him Ishmael, “for the Lord has given heed to your affliction” (Gen 16:11).

Hagar is amazed at the prophecy and amazed that she has seen God and survived. So she confers on God, on the very Creator of the universe, a name. God has given her existence, identity, and purpose. By allowing her to name Him, He also empowers her.

She calls God “El-roi,” which means something like “God who sees” or “God of seeing.”

From the depths of what He knows about them, God named her and her child. No longer will it matter what Sarai and Abram call her, for they do not see the truth as God does. They do not see her real self. They do not see her destiny. She is Hagar, mother of Ishmael, matriarch of the the Arab people. Her name will not be forgotten again.

In this moment of being seen and being named, Hagar finds liberation.

Being an Immigrant

Like my father, Hagar was an immigrant. Both of them found themselves in foreign lands, among foreign people, where they had to make a life for themselves. For both of them, this meant losing their original names and taking on new identities. Hagar was a slave who, in the midst of her oppression and despair, could remind herself that one day, she would be seen by the world as important. My father did his best to find a place for himself with his Americanized name, and he did fine, earning a college degree and building an engineering business.

Immigrants often work hard, and it’s not unusual for one to become self-employed. Often, they must endure people mispronouncing their names, Americanizing their names without their approval, even calling them slurs. Desperate individuals who attempt to cross into our country from Mexico find themselves incarcerated, given numbers, and called “animals” by the president of the land they thought might shelter them. [7] So often, we reject the foreigner, the one with names we don’t like or don’t understand.

The Meaning of Her Name

Back when it was used in scripture, Hagar was a term, not a name. We aren’t certain what it means. According to Nissan Mindel, in his article “Hagar,” a midrash tells us that her name is a combination of the words Ha and Agar. Together, they mean “this is the reward.” Mindel tells us that it isn’t Hagar who is the reward, but rather that she is being rewarded by getting to live in the household of such a godly man as Abraham. [8] Others say her name means “flight” or “immigrant.” [9] But I tend to agree with the biblical commentators Thomas Coke and Adam Clarke who believed that her name meant “stranger” or “sojouner.” [10]

In some ways and in some times and places, we are all strangers. You might say we are all sojourners on this earth. As such, we all deserve the welcome due a traveller. One way to provide welcome, to a baby who is newly born or to an immigrant seeking refuge in our country, is to call them by their true name. This may be the name they received when they were born, but it doesn’t have to be.

In his poem, “Please Call Me by My True Names,” Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that we are not just our separate, individual self, but we are the mayfly, and the bud on the branch, and the caterpillar, and the starving child, and the pirate, and the man dying in a labor camp, and the one who rapes and kills, and the child refugee. We are all these things and more, for we are all one. There is no separation.

Being Responsible with the Names We Use

If we call one another by our true names, by all these things we are and all we share, we help each other “wake up,” Hanh says. When we hear our true names spoken, “the door of compassion” within our hearts can open. We can then see the truth of one another and of ourselves. In this way, we will express compassion for all. [11]

Names are powerful. Whether we change them, or hang onto them, or find that others have scratched them out, it matters what names we are called. Whether “whore” or “animal” or “sojourner,” “slave” or “mistress,” the terms used to describe us matter. What we call one another impacts what we believe about ourselves, what we believe about others, and how we live.

There is power in naming, and we are responsible for making sure that power is not abused. The relationships we forge with those we call by name depend on how we choose to name them. May we look closely at those around us. May we see beneath the surface of their skin and shape and know them as they truly are, the way God saw Hagar, the way Thich Nhat Hanh sees us all. If we do, then “the door of our compassion” may open, and we will call one another names of honor, truth, and love.

In faith and fondness,

Barbara

Credits

1. See for example Deluzain, H. Edward, “Names and Personal Identity,” Behind the Name, 1996, http://www.behindthename.com/articles/3.php, accessed 6/26/18.
2. Ngcobo, Lauretta. And They Didn’t Die, The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1999, 42.
3. Kadari, Tamar, “Hagar: Midrash and Aggadah,” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, 20 March 2009. Jewish Women’s Archive, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hagar-midrash-and-aggadah, accessed 6/27/18.
4. Wang, Hansi Lo, “The Map of Native American Tribes You’ve Never Seen Before,” National Public Radio, June 24, 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/06/24/323665644/the-map-of-native-american-tribes-youve-never-seen-before, accessed 6/27/18.
5. Garry, Mike, “The Importance of Names,” Culture and Youth Studies, http://cultureandyouth.org/identity/articles-identity/the-importance-of-names/, 2015, accessed 6/26/18.
6. Le Guin, Ursula K., “She Unnames Them,” Christina Buchmann and Celina Spiegel, eds., Out of the Garden: Women Writers on the Bible, New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1994, 331-333, 333.
7. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld, “Trump Calls Some Unathorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ In His Rant,” New York Times, May 16, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/us/politics/trump-undocumented-immigrants-animals.html, accessed 6/28/18.
8. Mindel, Nissan, “Hagar,” Kehot Publication Society, Chabad.org, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112053/jewish/Hagar.htm, accessed 6/29/18.
9. “Hagar: The Woman Who Lost a Bottle but Found a Well,” Bible Gateway, Zondervan, https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/all-women-bible/Hagar, accessed 6/29/18.
10. Coke, Thomas. “Commentary on Genesis 16:1”. Thomas Coke Commentary on the Holy Bible. https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/tcc/genesis-16.html. 1801-1803 and Clarke, Adam. “Commentary on Genesis 16:1”. “The Adam Clarke Commentary”. https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/acc/genesis-16.html. 1832.
11. Hanh, Thich Nhat, “Please Call Me by My True Names,” Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, New York: Bantam, 1991, 123-124.