Reaction to Personal Names1

It has been pointed out by Abraham2 that the name a person bears is often a determining factor in influencing definite psychic reactions, such as scorn, pride or shame, upon the person himself. Such a tendency is exemplified by the remark of one of my youthful patients, in a profound depression, “My name is Chrystal and I should be pure”—a comment which, by the way, revealed the gist of his depression.

In the course of other analyses of patients complaining of various neurotic symptoms, there has been a striking frequency with which patients have referred to their attitude toward their Christian names or in some way altered their surnames. Where the reaction has had any intense force, the vital influence has depended not so much upon the force of the name on the person, as Abraham states, but upon innate feelings which the patient believes is in some way mirrored in his name, to or against his advantage.

Silberer has aptly compared the name of a person to his shadow. Although it accompanies him throughout life and is inseparable from him, when impassively examined, there is nothing in the name which is an integral part of himself. At times it is possible by travelling under an incognito for the person to escape from his name. The assumed name temporarily conceals him as night does a shadow. But a person can never quite escape from his real name and the incognito becomes comparable to the shadow, which inevitably disappears in the light of the morning sun.

Unquestionably many names (such as Theodore and Woodrow in America or Victoria in England) are bestowed upon children with the more or less conscious hope that the person may, in the future, emulate or surpass the qualities attributed by the donor to the child's namesake. The name represents an omen that coming events may cast their shadows before. Thus the bearer of the name from association begins to identify himself with his namesake and