What’s in a Name?
A project of The Courage to Be Human
“To name someone is to decide whether you will bless them, wound them, or erase them.”
We rarely think about the names we give groups, ideas, or even ourselves. Names feel harmless, incidental, and automatic. But naming is one of the most powerful spiritual acts we ever perform. It reveals who we believe we are, and it shapes who we allow others to be.
This blog is called The Courage to Be Human. At first glance, you might say, “It doesn’t take courage to be human; I was born this way.” True enough. But being born human and living human are not the same thing. The core of our humanity—compassion, wonder, honesty, and morality—often escapes us. Something in us resists it. This resistance usually favors the security of labels over the uncertainty of a relationship.
And so we name.
● We name ourselves so others will know who we think we are.
● We name others so we don’t have to see who they really are.
● We name entire groups so we can decide who deserves mercy and who deserves none.
Naming blesses, wounds, and erases.
When Naming Becomes a Weapon
Recently, the American president, Donald J. Trump, referred to Somali refugees as “garbage” and liberals as “scum.” These are not simply insults. They are acts of vandalism. When a leader wielding political, cultural, and economic power refers to human beings as trash, it corrodes the public's imagination. Violence, whether verbal, legal, or physical, suddenly feels justified. Dehumanization always begins in the mind and mouth long before it reaches the trigger finger.
Now we have the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. He’s taken to calling his position the “Secretary of War.” He talks about a vague concept called “warrior ethos” as the organizing principle of our military. The term is not new; it’s floated around military circles for decades. But words matter. Naming matters. When we mythologize war, we spiritualize violence. We make it noble. We protect it from moral scrutiny. We tell young men and women to abandon their humanity in favor of a romanticized identity that exists on recruiting posters.
I say these words as someone who flew helicopters in Vietnam, finding targets for gunships and bombers that killed humans.
We had names for our adversaries. Every name was racial and derogatory. These words shielded us from the harsh truth. The people we were ordered to kill were sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers. Language was our shield. Language numbed the conscience. Language made the unbearable doable.
Unfortunately, we also used these racist terms for our allies—distrust and animosity through naming.
Naming is never neutral.
Ancient Lessons We Keep Forgetting
This is not a new human problem. It is as old as humanity.
In the Bible, people believed names carried spiritual weight—identity, destiny, and blessing. But that sacred understanding had a shadow side: outsiders received other names. Philistines. Gentiles. Unclean. Naming became a dividing tool, a way to draw a bright line between “us” and “them,” “beloved” and “expendable.” Evil is a name universally accepted by those who prefer to ignore multiple biblical exhortations to love our neighbor.
Native Americans also understood the spiritual power of naming. But European colonizers weaponized it, stripping tribes of their names and assigning English ones. They renamed entire landscapes as if they had never existed before their arrival. Naming became an instrument of domination. To rename something is to pretend you created it.
European immigrants faced the same violence on arrival in America. Poles, Irish, and Asians all got named in derogatory terms. My German family were Krauts and worse during the two World Wars.
And still—still—we use names that shape the soul of our nation.
Can we recognize humanity if our language denies it?
Here is the uncomfortable question:
Is it possible to recognize the humanity of others if we choose to call them something offensive?
I don’t believe it is.
Once we decide that a person or group is trash, vermin, enemy, illegal, or animal, the mind does not simply devalue them—it reclassifies them. And when people are reclassified, we feel fewer obligations to them. Compassion becomes optional. Violence becomes rational. Indifference becomes natural.
This is the spiritual crisis beneath our political one.
The question is not whether we are "woke," but rather whether we are awake.
It's not about being politically correct, but about being spiritually responsible with the words we release into the world. Political correctness at its best is simply an attempt to repair the harm caused by careless naming. At its worst, it becomes another weapon to shame rather than heal. But the impulse behind it is not wrong. We should be cautious with names. We should be reluctant to speak in categories that reduce the mystery of another human life.
The Courage It Takes to Be Human
To be human—fully, fiercely, vulnerably human—requires courage. It takes courage to see the face of a stranger and imagine wants and needs like our own. Our essential humanness requires courage to refuse the easy language of contempt. Leaders who normalize cruelty through their power must be resisted. To be human requires that we confess the names we ourselves have used—sometimes casually, sometimes with intention—and to repent.
That is the invitation of this project: The Courage to Be Human.
● Reclaim naming as a spiritual act.
● Speak in ways that restore dignity rather than erode it.
● Choosing language that makes the world safe for all inhabitants.
● And perhaps, someday, to hear our own name—spoken by another, with reverence—and recognize it as a blessing we have also offered.
Contemplative Cue:
Sit quietly for one minute.
Say the name of someone you find difficult—silently, gently.
Notice what softens, resists, or stirs in your chest.
Ask: What would it take for me to see this person as human again?
Do not answer quickly. Let the question do its work.