While doing my M.a, our class visited Berlin for an excursion to the "Brot Für Die Welt" organisation. We were given a tour and then listened to a speech about what they are trying to do as an organisation, offering scholarships to help students. The speaker mentioned that he believes that stipends should be given to people who need them regardless of their age, sex, gender or their name, at this point everyone looked at me and started laughing. The speaker was confused, and someone started to explain that my name is Adolph. As a German, he hesitated what to say, but stuck with his story that, "you should not be treated differently because of your name."
I recently read a few articles about the problem of name discrimination. An example can be seen here, "Jan has a better chance of getting hired than Mohamed." Clearly there is something embedded in a name that is related to its culture and race and, therefore, is also an issue of racism. I followed some comments on Facebook where a foreigner living in Belgium wrote that he applied for many jobs and never got an answer. When he applied under the name Philip, he got an interview the next day, but no one responded when he wrote his passport name of Filipé. Today there are some kids whose names are Beyoncé, much like some 40-year-olds with the name Elvis. Perhaps in the next few years fewer children would be named Jophrey because of "Game of thrones". From this, you can guess someone's age by their name according to when it was fashionable. And if you do not want to choose a fashionable name you can buy a book with a whole list of names to choose from to name your baby.
As a South African many of my friends had fun to pronounce names with clicking sounds in them, (which most white people could not pronounce) so they opted for an English name. Perhaps people would say this is the colonial pressure forcing you to have an English name. But its a choice isn't? I chose to keep my name despite the laughs. That's why I enjoy it in fact, I have many a story to tell about people's reactions to my name, from German embassies to train officials telling me to write my name on the ticket. I met a guy whose name translates to "not the same house" implying that the boy's parents are separated and thus not from the same house. Many illiterate parents wrote on their children's birth certificates the only thing they knew how to write, such as "exit", or "no smoking". It is typical of Africans to name their children according to the circumstances around their birth. They might be named "Bula" meaning rain, or they might be named "Matric certificate" because they wish their children will graduate from school.
So what is in a name? In English, we say "my name is" in German and many other languages you say "I am called". Our names are part of our identity who we are and to what we respond. A whole other discussion would be about nicknames, which is what people would prefer to associate themselves with. Some people wish to use their second names or any other name than their given names. Names are what we associate ourselves with. Names are powerful since it forms a part of who you are and how you define yourself. If someone asks me "who are you" I will simply reply, "I am Adolph".
I am Adolph, and that in a very faint way, relates me to all the other Adolphs out there.