Category: 31days

Term of the day: calling: vocation; purpose.

Thoughts:

Have you ever wondered about purpose? Do you believe that people are called, made, and destined to be or do certain things? Does a person’s name have any bearing on what their purpose or calling might be? Does having the right name make you “the one” or is being “the one” what determines your name?

Here’s where I travel to a  new level of geekness; you may want to look away.

I hope I’m not too out of date with my references, but let’s take a look at the character Neo from the film, The Matrix. For someone who didn’t know he was “the one” he picked a pretty bold and, in some ways, prophetic name as his hacker, later Matrix, moniker. Neo means new, but it also means so much more. This isn’t a term you would apply to a new car, but perhaps a new wave of transportation engineering that could change the world. For “the one” to call himself “Neo” before he even knew who he was is, at the very least, foreshadowing if not something more. “The one”, Neo, does bring about a whole new era for the entire human race, but on an even more significant level, by the end of the third film, we know that he’s simply the newest “the one”. I’m not even sure how to wrap my head around that.

Religions aside, let’s take a look at this famous name: Jesus Christ. What does it really mean?

In the Bible, Jesus is called emmanuel (a very nice name when capitalized) which means messiah, but his name is still considered to be Jesus of Nazareth. It was very common during the time of his story for people to be called and associated by where they lived or came from. That’s how many surnames that sound like places came about.

But speaking of surnames, why doesn’t Jesus have one? Not many people did back then, at least not the way we do now, unless they came from an important family. Family names were used as first or proper names. If your father was Jacob of Bethel, you were Jacobson of Bethel and so on. I’m greatly generalizing here, but you get the picture. I must admit that my research on this matte is limited to names and not Biblical truths, so I can’t guess as to whether Jesus had other names that connected him to his mother and father, Mary and Joseph.

There is no definitive meaning for what “Christ” means other than “Christ”. There are too many other suggestions to list here. It is simply the name of the Christian savior. However, the name Jesus has many origins, but the oldest seems to be Hebrew, but I’m not an expert. I just do this stuff as a hobby.

So what does Jesus mean? It means “Jehovah is generous”. I guess that’s why many Hispanic Catholics and others still like to name their sons, Jesus. When using the Spanish pronunciation, it’s actually a very average and pleasant-sounding name. It doesn’t send out a feeling of higher power. So in essence, Jesus Christ means “Jehovah is generous; the savior”.

Name of the day: Virgil Millhouse.

Breakdown and meaning:

Virgil is a difficult name to find a meaning for. I’ve honestly never been able to get very far with this and decided to try all new searches just for this post. Anything I’ve found, or put together here may or may not be accurate and is derived from my searches of the links mentioned below.

First off, Vigil is definitely an English spelling for “Vergil”. Vergil is derived from “Vergilius”. Vergilius might be Roman or old English or some ancient dialect of German. I really don’t know. I also don’t know what “Vergilius” is supposed to mean. The “verg” in the name stems from the Latin “virga” which means rod or column. The “lius” is a common ending for many Latin, Greek, and old English/Roman names.

A few sources actually list meanings for Virgil with its English spelling. With English, Latin, and Spanish roots, Virgil can mean “strong” or “profiting”, so I guess the Latin “rod” connection could stand if rods are considered examples of strength. Oh, and of course, the name is associated with the famous poet and author of the Aeneid.

The last name Millhouse is much easier to define. It is the mill house. It is the place for milling, such as a windmill or watermill for milling or grinding wheat.

Well, that’s it for Day 16. See you tomorrow.

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Go back to the beginning to see all the posts in this series.

Outside of my own personal search throughout the years, basic meanings and definitions of the terms used here can be found at the following websites:http://www.meaning-of-names.com/, Google search http://en.wikipedia.org/, and http://dictionary.reference.com/.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords