Channels, Fall 2018

Channels • 2018 • Volume 3 • Number 1 Page 25 considered to be a description of character or conditions” (1997, p. 147). Ross later cautions against the tendency to equate a name describing personality to a person’s very soul and suggests that narrators analyzed names “in such a way as to unlock the meaning of the event” (1997, p. 149) rather than the meanings we read being inherent to the names. Kaiser (1980), Ross (1997), and Reiterer, Ringgren, & Fabry (2006) all highlight the connection of a name to reputation, identity, and existence. Names could then represent a person and his existence (Ross, 1997) and Kaiser goes so far as to write “‘to cut off the name’ was equal to liquidating the person himself” (1980, p. 934). From these studies, my extended definition of naming conveyed by qārāʾ with šēm is the act of giving a name within specific circumstances by one with authority over the name- receiver, whose authority is respected by others such that the name spoken identifies and represents the receiver. First Draft of Schema From my extended definition, study of Alston (2000), and example of Arcadi (2013), the following variables were found in the act of naming: U – a name-giver O – intends to name X – name-receiver C – community E – naming