What's in a Name?

Sunday, 4th November 2007

My dad's name is Michael. It is of Hebrew origin and it means "God-like" or "resembling God".

My dad wanted his son to have a name starting with M as well. He named me after Malcolm McDonald, who was the British High Commissioner to Singapore in the 1960s.

Oh, by the way, we have continued the "M" tradition and named our son Mark. It is of Greek origin and it means "mighty warrior".

I went to ThinkBabyNames to check the meaning of my name. It is of Scottish origin and is derived from the Gaelic words "Maol Caluim" which means "servant/devotee of Columba".
It is among the top 1000 popular names in the USA. It used to be in the top 200 in the 1910s to 1930s as well as in the early 1990s, but there has been a steady decline since then...

A further check on Wikipedia revealed that St Columba was a Catholic monk/priest who lived from 521 AD to 597 AD. He is credited as being a leading figure in the revitalization of monasticism, and his achievements illustrated the importance of the Celtic church in bringing a revival of Christianity to Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire". His followers were called "maol caluim".

A modern translation of my name is "teachable spirit".

I suppose for someone to be a devotee of a Catholic monk, he needs to have a teachable spirit.

Which brings me to the topic of "stewardship" that I blogged about yesterday.

I have mentioned elsewhere on my blog that I like the music of the 1980s because that was the music I grew up on as a acne-ridden teenager. Even now, I store quire a number of 80s songs on the microSD card of my PDA phone. I also listen to these songs in my car (when I am not listening to Pastor Prince's sermons, that is).

Anyway, my all-time favourite band of the 1980s was a 4-piece band from Scotland called Big Country. Their music was distinctly unique because they made two electric guitars sound like they were bagpipes by using various effects and heavy reverb.

An example of this can be heard on their first hit "Fields of Fire".



Oopsie, hope I'll not be seen as promoting "secular" music :-/

Anyway, their lead singer was a chap called Stuart Adamson whom I used to imitate singing while strumming a tennis racquet as a make-believe guitar. I even went so far as to take on his name as my middle name (not officially though).

Stuart is also a Scottish name, and is derived from the word "steward".

I did a Wikipedia search on Big Country recently, and was sad to discover that Stuart Adamson took his own life several years ago, at the age of 43.

Which only goes to show that humans are after all fallen by nature, and we need Jesus to be our Redeemer. The only person that we should look up to as our "hero", and who will never let us down, is the Lord Jesus Christ. His is the name above all other names. Amen?