Not Just A Name

As I was driving home the other night I drove past a church I noticed the message board had nothing more than the word: “Immanuel” on it. Knowing that the word is used a few different times in the bible, in reference to Jesus, it intrigued me enough to do a web-search on. I found an article on Wikipedia that talked about it’s meaning and origin. It literally means “God with us”, which I had heard before (but obviously didn’t retain) but even more interesting was that it consists of 2 Hebrew words (“El”, meaning God and “Immanu”, meaning with us). I have heard of other names for God (El Shaddai, God Almighty, etc.) where the “el” comes at the beginning and it is two words but it never occured to me that there are words with it at the end. Not being a linguistics specialist, this comes as no surprise. Anyway, as I was sitting there, re-growing some braincells, it occurred to me that my name, Nathaniel (which I’ve known meant gift of God) follows this same convention. In realizing this, I guess I felt a certain sense of pride that my name actually contains the word God in it. It also makes me feel a bit shameful when I look back at my teenage years where I didn’t like my name and thought it was the least cool name in school, partially due to being teased. At that time in my life, I began going by Nate, and though, in growing up, I’m no longer concerned with the coolness of my name, I still go by Nate. All my friends and family are accustomed to it and it’s just easier and quicker to say. I find it ironic how I used view it as an uncool name and now feel proud to have such a name. In closing, I found a list of other such names that refer to God. It’s interesting to peruse the list and see all the names of people I know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_names_referring_to_El