What's In a Name

Birthday cakes, a tasty reminder and symbol of celebration of the years past since you were born. A special treat dedicated to you. The candles are lit, Happy Birthday is written with creamy icing, as well as your name. Your name, a special notice of honor placed on the cake, you’re so thrilled to see it, and you’re especially thrilled to see it just in case you’re at the age where you tend to forget what your name is. But what if someone told you that your name couldn’t be on the cake, not because there wasn’t room for it, but because of what your name was. How would you feel?

3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell’s father was denied a birthday cake for his son because well….his name was Adolf Hitler – like you couldn’t figure that out. This child probably has no real idea who Hitler was, his parents do, but despite that they still named their child after the Nazi dictator because they like the name and knew nobody else had it. Heath Campbell, the father, said, "They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what [Hitler] did.”

So let’s say your name is John Smith, it doesn’t mean you are the famous 17^th century explorer, it’s just your name. But the problem with that is there’s always a chance of being named after that person. Now I know people named Jesus, but that doesn’t mean they’re the Christ, though personally I wish people would name their children after Him. The point I think I’m trying to make here is, should we judge someone based on their name? So someone wouldn’t sell a cake with the name Adolf Hitler because they knew what kind of a person Hitler was. Now would that same person also deny a cake to President-elect Barack Obama because his middle name is Hussein?

We may not like who a person is named after, or that they are named after a person despite whether they were good or bad. But it’s important to not judge a book by its cover, judge a person by who they are, not by what’s in a name.