We tend to distinguish who we are from what we do. So, I am Jeff, and I am always Jeff. I might be skiing or not skiing. I might be fishing or not fishing. What I do can change, but what I am remains the same. In modern times our names don’t tend to tell us very much about who the person is that bears it, but this wasn’t always the case. Take the famous Viking, Ivar the Boneless. Ivar suffered from some kind of deboning ailment in his legs, identified at his birth and contributing to his name. Ivar the Boneless was always the Boneless, whether he was fishing or skiing. (And yes, I imagine that if he skied, he probably did so on a sled, being boneless!) He could stop fishing or start skiing, but either way he always remained boneless. Thus, Ivar’s name tells us something significant about who he was, not just what he did. His name offers us an essential quality of Ivar, one that never changed, one that always identified who he was.

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