Beyond God the Father
Mary Daly
It is necessary to grasp the fundamental fact that women have had the power of naming stolen from us.
Pornography: Men Possessing Women
Andrea Dworkin
Men have the power of naming, a great and sublime power. This power of naming enables men to define experience, to articulate boundaries and values, to designate to each thing it’s realm and qualities, to determine what can and cannot be expressed to control perception itself. [...] The world is his because he has named everything in it, including her. She uses this language against herself because it cannot be used any other way.”
(2) The meaning of divided is: He divided them by naming one, day and the other, night.
(18) The Divine said, “It is not good for the Earthling to be alone; I will make a fitting counterpart for him.” (19) And the Divine formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky, and brought them to the Earthling to see what he would call them; and whatever the Earthling called each living creature, that would be its name. (20) And the Earthling gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts; but no fitting counterpart for a human being was found. (21) So the Divine cast a deep sleep upon the Earthling; and, while he slept, [God] took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that site. (22) And the Divine fashioned the rib that had been taken from the Earthling into a woman, bringing her to the Earthling. (23) Then the Earthling said, “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.This one shall be called woman, for from a man was she taken.”
(4) “As for Me, this is My covenant with you: You shall be the father of a multitude of nations. (5) And you shall no longer be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham,*Understood as “father of a multitude.” for I make you the father of a multitude of nations.
(15) And God said to Abraham, “As for your wife Sarai, you shall not call her Sarai, but her name shall be Sarah.
(27) Then he said, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.” But he answered, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” (28) Said the other, “What is your name?” He replied, “Jacob.” (29) Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” (30) Jacob asked, “Pray tell me your name.” But he said, “You must not ask my name!” And he took leave of him there.
Tao Te Ching
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
...The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin of all particular things....
(3) The children of Israel said, the Divine is a man making war for us: from generation to generation God makes known God's power unto the people of the house of Israel. God is God's Name; according to God's Name, so is God's power; God's Name shall be blessed for ever and ever.
.... אַרְבָּעָה דְּבָרִים מְקָרְעִין גְּזַר דִּינוֹ שֶׁל אָדָם, אֵלּוּ הֵן: צְדָקָה, צְעָקָה, שִׁינּוּי הַשֵּׁם, וְשִׁינּוּי מַעֲשֶׂה ..
...And Rabbi Yitzḥak said: A person’s sentence is torn up on account of four types of actions. These are: Giving charity, crying out in prayer, a change of one’s name, and a change of one’s deeds for the better. ...
Reb Zalman Shachter-Shalomi
[T]he [last Lubavitcher] Rebbe replied: "A body and a soul are connected by a name. The name is what connects them." When somebody faints and you call [them] by [their] name, you want to call [them] back--the name is very important--it connects the body and the soul.
(א) וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל רְאוּ קָרָא ה' בְּשֵׁם בְּצַלְאֵל..... אַתְּ מוֹצֵא שְׁלֹשָׁה שֵׁמוֹת נִקְרְאוּ לוֹ לְאָדָם, אֶחָד מַה שֶּׁקּוֹרְאִים לוֹ אָבִיו וְאִמּוֹ, וְאֶחָד מַה שֶּׁקּוֹרְאִין לוֹ בְּנֵי אָדָם, וְאֶחָד מַה שֶּׁקּוֹנֶה הוּא לְעַצְמוֹ. טוֹב מִכֻּלָּן מַה שֶּׁקּוֹנֶה הוּא לְעַצְמוֹ.
(1) And Moses said unto the children of Israel: “See, the Lord hath called by name Bezalel the son of Uri” (Exod. 35:30). .. R. Meir said: ... You find that a person is known by three names: the name by which their father and mother call them, the name by which other people call them, and the one they aquire for themselves; the most important name is the one they aquire for themselves.
A Frog Under the Tongue: Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe, p 202-203
by Marek Tuszewicki, translated by Jessica Taylor-Kucia
"A seriously ill patient would not be addressed by name, as this might enable the angel of death to identify the person for whom he had been sent. The widespread custom of changing a patient's name was justified in a similar way. The rabbis saw the genesis of this tradition in the biblical story of the renaming of Sarai to Sarah simultaneously with the Divine promise of offspring....If parents feared for their child's life--whether due to illness or past experience of the pre-mature deaths of previous children-they would add or change its name to a 'trembling name' (tsiterdiker nomen). These new names suggested adulthood, and hence survival of the danger period such as Alter, Alte, Zeyde, or Babe, or longevity and vitality, such as Hayim or Hayah.... Some rabbinic authorities recommended that the new name should not include any letter from the previous name...In other cases the logic behind the choice of name was to garner divine grace for the child through a symbolic link between the name and a given festive period. For instance, if the child was bornd around the festival of Purim, it might be named Mordkhe, and if around the fast day of 9 Av, Menahem might be chosen (Heb. comforter)...