Temple names

[Flystripper]

I was very disappointed in my new name since it is also slang for "idiot". I had called people by my new name a million times as an insult before going to the temple for the first time.

[wuapinmon]

Yeah, I can't remember the joke now to explain it.

[Eddie]

I was very disappointed in my new name since it is also slang for "idiot". I had called people by my new name a million times as an insult before going to the temple for the first time.

More evidence that there is a God. And that He has a sense of humor.

[wuapinmon]

We brought some boxes of stuff from my wife's youth back East with us. We're at a five-day stop in Asheville, NC before descending back into the heat of the Sandhills/Coastal Plain, so my wife decided to go through them. One had all of her Cabbage Patch Kids in them. She told me their names, and one of them has my temple name. I couldn't help but start giggling when she told me, and she wanted to know what was so funny, but I couldn't tell her. She pressed me on it, indignant, and all I could tell her was, "I can't tell you what it is," otherwise, she'd know my name, which I'm fairly certain breaks a covenant.

I don't like that she can't know mine, but I can know hers.

[SoonerCoug]

My wife forgot her temple name, so I had to remind her of it today.

Both of my wives (ex-wife and current wife) have names that start with R.

[FN Phat]

My wife forgot her temple name, so I had to remind her of it today.

Both of my wives (ex-wife and current wife) have names that start with R.

I hope you chose wisely!

[wuapinmon]

I posted this on cougarguard a couple of years ago, and am too lazy to revise and resubmit here. So I'll copy-and-paste (although with a couple of additions):

Names were words of power in the ancient world - and gods/goddesses often had "secret" names that were not supposed to be spoken aloud except when you were invoking its power. Knowing a god's true name gave a person a degree of power over that god. Correspondingly, not knowing its true name let the god off the hook for any prayers or dedications it might not want to fulfill.

Keeping these names secret was very important. In Egyptian myth, Isis tricked Ra into revealing his secret name so that she could use that power to resurrect Osiris. The Roman-Republican poet Quintus Valerius Soranus was (supposedly) put to death for speaking the secret name of Rome. (It's "Amor" - Roma spelled backwards. Don't put me to death, pellegrino.)

Since some of these names were secret, ancient Roman prayer invoked a particular god by all the names they could think of "and any other name you wish to be called by" just to be sure that all their bases were covered. In this vein, Acts 17 tells of an altar dedicated to an unknown god - set up by the Athenians to placate a god whose name was unknown or secret, in an effort to appease, placate, and maybe even appeal to it.

In the New Testament, miracles are often (but not always) performed "by the name" of Jesus Christ - not by the power, or authority, etc. The name brought the power. (E.g. Acts 3.6-7). Arde'et, an Ethiopian book with gnostic roots claims to record the many secret names of Jesus that he taught his disciples. Among these names was the greatest name, "Bersabehelyos." In the book, Jesus instructs his disciples to write these names and wear them and invoke them to do good. In a more relevant context, LDS are taught that the "name of Jesus Christ" can overpower Satan.

Saying a god's name was serious business, not to be taken lightly. Like playing with handguns, there's a time and a place to use great power, and the power was not to be used idly.

Hence, Saying "Oh my god" is not taking the Lord's name in vain . . . that's not the Lord's name. It's more of a title. I understand LDS cultural norms today make this phrase taboo, but it's not a transgression of the third commandment, at least in the sense that Moses would have understood. We don't even know the name of the Old Testament God, so powerful was this word. The best we can do is the tetragrammaton YHWH, Latinized to "Jehovah." The commandment given to Moses is "Don't use this great power inappropriately."

LDS scripture suggests that two of God's names are "Ahman" (D&C 78.20; 95.17) and "man of holiness" (Moses 6.57). Elohim is more of a descriptive title (plural, but can act as a singular with extra oomph), but in LDS parlance has come to denote God-Father as opposed to Jehovah-Jesus. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead and in later Gnostic Christian belief, secret names and magic formulas also acted as passwords or tokens of recognition in the afterlife, and provide the initiate with special powers and the keys to defeat the powers of darkness.

Such a good post!