When I was born it was decided that I would take the name of my grandmother from my father’s side, which was something quite common in the place I was born. Although this has been a tradition for as long as people were giving birth in this land, a movement of ancestral homage to the lineage before them, it is a movement that encloses systemic risks. Taking the name of one of your ancestors potentially means that you are also assuming part of that ancestor’s fate; the good and the bad parts, the qualities but also the hurdles, the agonies, the systemic entanglements. In a way it is like a heritage that you embody unknowingly because you have recognized and accepted another person’s history and presence.
I believe that none of those hidden symmetries of energy and systemic family rules of order were known to my parents or any other parent that in good will are honouring in a common way and with a sense of pride and responsibility their family history. And I am not particularly aware of any objections that my mother might have brought as the name was not coming from her side but then again the rule was that the first born boy or girl gets the name from the husband side. My parents, in good will, did their part to honour the families they were born and the foundation of their new family into the system of the bigger family that they were now part of.
Shortly after, although I have not been able to verify yet whether it was on the same day of my baptism or not, my aunt, who happened to be at the time a History and Literature High School Teacher, with all of her literature background, somehow decided to change my name to make it short and to comprise it with a very unusual combination of two syllabus. Again, what was widely common where I come from and during the first decay of my life, because these things change every decay or so, was for people to call you with a shorter version of your name, which indicated a young age or a sense of familiarity with the person. In some cases that proved to be a stellar choice that allowed the person to enjoy the status of a unique name. In some other cases it resulted adults carrying their early baby names till their death, remaining juvenile in some way or matter for the rest of their lives. I have met middle aged women called “Bebeka” which is the equivalent of “Baby”. Awkwardly cute.
Fate had laid the cards for me and I was stuck with an unusual name for the rest of my family life. I loved it for many many years. Difficult as it was, it was always raising questions. “Your name is what? Where does it come from?” which together with my very long beautiful curly hair and my tall body gave me a sense of confidence and originality. Once they got to learn it they were not going to easily forget me.
When I started learning English, translating phonetically my name into English was a real challenge. Because English alphabet does not have two of the consonants that are in my name. And in such cases, there is never a universal agreement of how the name is spelt correctly. So I went with the official way, the one that as I found out years later a computer at the Passport Issuing Department automatically assigns. Nothing romantic about it and nothing linguistically correct if I may say so.
But I was too young to understand about systemic energy risks or the politics of international passports and how this could affect my name branding in the future. So I was well nested in my naivity. I had my unusual name, I knew how to write it officially and unofficially in English and I was using it in my correspondence and social gatherings as I was pleasing.
That was for the outside world, because for my family of course, the immediate family of parents, siblings and aunties. and to an extend to some close early friends, my young short version of my name is still the name they call me till today.
I was enjoying my strange short name, the name was me and I was that name. None that I have ever met in my country carried that name; I felt that I was the only one, a “special person” and certainly a person with a unique name. I was also young, ambitious, top of my class and with great prospects for my life.
I kept the name even in my university years, in the world of the adults, although unkwoningly I was paving my path to become one of these middle aged women with a childlike name. I was still deriving a sense of uniqueness and peculiarity out of it at a time that I really needed it.
The world of the adults was not as promising as I thought it would be; being among thousands of other young ambitious students, women more beautiful than myself, and later professionals hungrier and definitely more competitive than I was, while I was struggling to forge my identity and make a sense out of it, that name was giving me something to stand out. But also it was connecting me with my past, with a circle of early friends and a family bunch where I felt celebrated and welcomed as person, as the early years for me were not years of fierce human competition or cruelty. I was a cute little baby and a young adolescent with all the innocence of my youth that was a functioning part of a family and a small community of people mostly centered around the house we were living, my school and the first degree of family relatives that we were seeing every year at family gatherings and holidays. My world was so clearly defined and within its framework everyone had its own place and identity.
Later on, as I was assuming the steering wheel of my life more and more every day in every way possible, exposed to the real outside world, away from home, fighting to find my voice in the university, during my practicums for my diploma, and in all other circumstance with all the new people I was meeting, part of me was reminiscent of the early days where I was just that simple girl with the unique name. My childhood name was carrying in me an energy of innoncence that I was not ready to let go entirely.
But the world of the adults has an honesty cruelty similar to that of a small child that without any filter tells you the truth in your face. Although you usually want to kiss and hug that cute little child that unapologetically told you the worst thing out of her big wide open loving heart, the same comments coming from an adult some years later will have a very different effect.
In the adults world I was being told that my name was the name of a child; it was not professional or appropriate enough for my job title, for an adult relationship and for an adult life overall. Some people were polite or suggestive about it others were blunt and had a particular mean way of passing the message. I was resisting the change. I was defending the validity of my name and my need to keep it alive and in the forefront for as long as I could. I felt a strong feeling of my entitlement to that name as it was me and I was that. And I did not want to betray all those memories with people that legitimately thought of me as being that person with that particular name. I felt that changing my name was striking them and those memories out.
But mostly as I would realize later in life, I was not letting go of what I thought I was. I was no longer that child but I could neither see it nor accept it.
The first time I started thinking changing my name and returning to the name I was baptised came out of a workshop where I was being trained in all the hidden systemic agreements in what is called the Family Field. A foreign facilitator that has never met me before neither could understand the intricacies of my name, felt just by sensing the energy of my short childhood version of my name that it was limiting how I was being received in the world of the adults. She felt that all that energy that I was supporting long past the age years of that period of my life was showing up while I was not allowing myself to grow to my actual age, and to assume the responsibilities, the pleasures and the adventures of this stage.
For the first time somebody was explaining to me what is beyond my name and how this was relating to my life. I paused. I was still sceptical and surely very emotionally attached, even glued in some respects, to my lovely short name that helped me survive and escape anonymity in my early years, but as an adult woman that I was fighting to improve my life and come out of limiting life patterns, I was also interested in the potential that could open if I just tried the most natural thing in the world, which is to be called exactly as I was baptised.
I agreed to a small healing ritual to help me take the movement to my name, which now became my new name and I slowly, really slowly, started using it to the people that I was meeting from that point on.
Starting asking people that knew me from the past to call me now with my full first name, was hard. It was a movement of self-emanicipation. I was taking my space but I was also in a way apoligizing to them for asking them to change their ways with me since I was the one that had led them to my early first name since the beginning. Shying away from assertiveness even when reclaiming a new movement to a new name was another one of the sings I was dealing with. As an adult I was not enjoying the confidence and drive I had as a young person. I haven’t realized the dreams that that young person was forming. I was struggling to fit in since my personality and natural tendencies were seated in a small minority spectrum of the world I was experiencing. The new name was a very typical name that had no particular significance, no originality or a special message to carry. I felt more anonymous than never and more lost into the societal herd.
But having felt the honesty of that facilitator, having sensed that she was passing a higher message for me, aiming to help me find a way to a better life, I took the chance and I went all in. I insisted now the old people call me with my full first name and I was careful with the new people not to mention the old short version of my name.
I realized experientailly the truth that an adult name is part of an adult life. An adult name carries a different energy and aligns with the plans and actions of a period in the life of someone that wants to bring into reality those early young dreams. The adult in me was now represented, protected and introduced by a name that bore the vibration of the period of life that I was in. And since it is also a family given name, it allowed me to connect with my ancestral line. It took some years to clear out family entanglements. I feel though that they did not come with the name; they were always there since the beginning. The name was merely reflecting them.
Accepting the full name was a movement of accepting my lineage with a different inner attitude that has wisdom, consciousness and joy in it. The harsh sound at the beginning, the criticism over its roughness and what it actually means, many many thoughts that have never stopped coming to my mind ever since, were small voices of resistance and an indication of another entanglement of energy misalignment that was lurking in the back. I took care of it with self-compassion one by one. I built my relationship with my name. From scratch, looking into what was still bothering me. Why was it bothering me? What was in it that I did not want to embrace in my life? And how was this translating into my life? Where else in my life the same exactly energetic pattern was pestering me?
I became a good detective for my own life and I was embodying my name gradually. Eventually there came a time where I made a name for myself, that people here and abroad could easily pronounce. I was ok with it and I did not look back.
And although my name was no longer an issue, after years and years in spiritual practice and training, one day, completely out of the blue, my Real Life Name came to me. Spoiler alert. It is not different in my language than the one that I was baptised. The information that came to me though changed the way I perceived it internally. I finally saw that my name was always my name and that my name is for this life, the life that I was born to live. No alteration, no justification, no adjustment no longer needed. This is my name and this is the most appropriate name for me for this life.
Sensing the exact vibration of my name I realized that the way it has always been pronounced in other languages was far away from what I am really called. Only because once a computer wrote it in a certain way in English alphabet and ever since I have not questioned it or explored it. But phonetically is very far away as in most other languages it’s hard to find the exact sounds that we have in our own language.
Yet it was clear for me now that I need to pronounce my name the same no matter in which part of the world I am in no matter the cultural framework or the alphabet involved.
My name, a name is not a combination of letters and meanings that make sense in one language and is gibberish in another. A Real Name is an intrinsic part of your Truth represented in a name form.
A name carries a vibration that is indicative of your level of life wisdom; it attracts, repels, or aligns you with a set of different life experiences, people and higher knowledge. It’s not accidental or circumstantial; it does not just happen, it’s not a marketing branding although it’s the ultimate branding you can achieve for your identity. When your life name comes to you it’s a vibrational call to support yourself to a new level of self-compassion and self-realization. It’s a framework of reference, a spermatic movement to open you up to new conceptions of what is possible and how it is possible. It’s a new form of protection sorting away unnecessary information, people and a bunch of life incidents that would not take you to your preferred life destination. And if like in my case it is a name of a Saint, well, finally you have an assigned Saint working for your behalf. How much better can this get!
Having changed my name twice already I was not expecting any more changes. Having built it up on my social media networks, changing even a small letter of how I am writing it in English messes up all search algorightms and basically requires that I built all of my branding again. But that’s exactly the point. What was working before will not take me futher. Now that I have seen the bigger picture and tasted the immense power of the Truth behind the vibration of my Real Name, it would be idiotic not to go along.
Yes it will take time again and again to establish the new name and I have done it before so I consider myself aware of the steps necessary. But I am more than certain that this is a movement that will open the direction of my life to the real life that I was dreaming since I was that young child with the unusal name. I am stil the same person; only now my name and my life are aligned to the realization of what life was always meant to be.
And I notice how the same principle applies to the services I bring to the world. I notice how much more naturally the activities and enterprises I am involved work when their name reflects the reality that is behind them. When I sense the real name of what it is that I am to bring to the world, that baby has a chance to thrive.
Over the years I have observed how many people especially those with an esoteric involvement have changed their names. Usually it is their Teacher that offers that insight. And I don’t know if that works for them, I know it is usually difficult for me to pronounce their new name and I always ask them how they want me to pronounce it, as from my own experience both of my early and late years having tested the impact of the real name in my world, I understand the difference that this makes for all of us.
And the only time that I felt impressed by the wisdom behind a name giving was when I listened to the story of one of my friends that she is half Native American and half US origin. They way the Native Americans are giving a name to a child impresses me to this day. I felt every inch of that name giving process and I was in awe of how accurate the Native American name of my friend is; she is exactly that. And I was dreaming and planning to travel and work with her tribe in pursuit of the Thruth of my Real Name in Life.
As my Soul was working to that direction, my inner work provided me with the answer to that question; is it because your Real Life Name comes to you as the old saying goes, that when you are ready the Teacher appears, the path opens, life speaks to you? Yes, I believe so now. I see the same principle taking place here. At the right ripe time, it happens.
Life spoke to me at a time that I was not expecting it. I was not aware of all the inner subtle movements that took place to find myself in that state of self-centred absolute awareness. I was constantly working on myself, without this particular goal in my mind. And yes, in the past I have expressed at some point my need to ask the Native American tribe’s wise people about my Real Name, so I can finally be in peace with that.
But Energy and Spirit are everywhere and it is not a matter of geography but conciousness; I stood there in bliss receiving my Real Name; come to think about it, this was another form of baptism, an inner ritual with no witnesses but my consciousness, and the highest vibration for myself that I have ever realized so far. In other words, a beautiful ceremony in harmony with myself, the Cosmos and the Big Field of Life.
And I took in the movement. I said yes to it. Now, I am helping my old friends to re-adjust to the new pronounciation of my name in English which turns out to be more difficult than I thought. I even investigated changing my name in my passport although the important thing is my inner movement that holds all the initial vibrational rate. This rate is pulsating in me in any case and it is here to teach me and lead me to a new way of being that I can surely and with great joy and self-assurance call it as Me.
When your Real Name comes to you, enjoy the stage of your life you are in. You have made it to a critical step. Your Real Name carries your energetic imprint in an honest and generous way. It will generaly reveal to you a sight so beautiful and loving. You will be You. And what else is there for you but the asbolute, joyous, celebratory self-revelation of your Reality? And now you know how this is really called!