It was Career Week 2019, and I was invited to address a group of ninth-grade students regarding a career in business. They sat looking fairly interested as I told them that in order to make their business successful, they had to have an angle or something that would attract the attention of potential customers. To make my point, I shared with them the story of a famous singer who, when first entering the music industry, used the name Gerry Dorsey (his real name was Arnold George Dorsey). As good as his songs were, his music was not gathering traction.
ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK
One day, his new manager decided to give him a name change, and he was assigned the stage moniker, Engelbert Humperdinck
When his records started to make the rounds at the various radio stations, the disc jockeys would make fun of him, saying, “Hey, look at the name of this one. Let’s just play this for fun.”
And so it was that Englebert Humperdinck began to be noticed, and his songs began to get airplay. The rest is history as he became one of the most famous British singers of all time, with well-loved songs like “Quando Quando Quando?”, “Spanish eyes”, and “There goes my everything.”
TODAY’S LESSON
What is the moral of our story?A name change can be either negative or positive, so be careful of the pen names you adopt or the stage name you take on; also, be aware of monikers, nicknames, names attached to your email, Instagram, Facebook accounts, etcetera.
You may mimic a good name, like the name of God, but do you think that God, in all His power and majesty, approves this? If you were God, would you?
Let’s go a little deeper on the topic of a God-instigated name change: when God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, this transformed his life completely. Jacob meant trickster and supplanter, but as Israel, God was preparing him to become the father of a nation, so his name had to be altered accordingly.
When Saul embraced his Latin name, Paul, he moved from being one of the fiercest persecutors of Christians to being numbered among the greatest apostles of all time.
When God changes your name, you can expect that it will always be for the best, but when man instigates the change, you can expect that the results may not always be good, and “pure crosses and problems,” as we say in Jamaica, end up following you all the days of your life.
THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G.
I close with an example of another singer. This time one with Jamaican roots.
The original name of the rapper “The Notorious B.I.G.” was Christopher George Latore Wallace. Born in 1972, he grew up between Brooklyn, New York and his mom’s family home in Trelawny, Jamaica (both his parents were Jamaicans). He decided to change his name inspired by Biggie Smalls, a character in the 1975 movie Let’s Do It Again. Calvin Lockhart played the part of Biggie Smalls, who was a gangster backed by a group of thugs.
When Lockhart refused the young rapper access to ‘his name’ by launching a lawsuit, Wallace resorted to using “The Notorious B.I.G.” instead. In 1993, he signed with Sean “Puffy” Combs’ recording label Bad Boy Records and released his first album, “Ready to Die” a year later.
Unfortunately, up until The Notorious B.I.G. was murdered in a drive-by shooting at age 24, his life was nothing short of “notorious.”
I adjure you: as much as possible, watch the name you bear.
“Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” Luke 10:20