Chapter 6: The Power of Our Names Across the Globe with Abdullah Najjar

In this chapter, I welcome you to "Islamland." Don’t be scared but be aware that the road may be bumpy and probably filled with way too many camel riders. Here’s the question: are you the rider or the actual camel? If this is confusing you, you definitely need to join our new story as we uncover the truth and the key that connects our names to our identity.

What if I told you your name holds the key to your identity? Join me and my dear friend Abdullah Najjar on an enlightening journey through the world of names! In this episode, we dive into the laughter and lessons behind our names and what they reveal about who we are.

After running into Abdullah on campus far too often, we decided it was time to record an episode for my podcast. Abdullah, a Libyan student navigating life in America, shares his wild encounters with cultural misconceptions. We reminisce about these funny stories and reflect on how our names shape perceptions, influence relationships, and carry cultural weight.

Get ready for a captivating discussion filled with humor, heart, and the extraordinary power of names. By the end, you’ll see your own name—and those around you—in a whole new light!

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Creators & Guests

Host

Veronika Becher

What is Identity Library?

Welcome to the Identity Library, a captivating podcast hosted by Veronika Becher, a German student exploring life in the United States. Join me as we unravel the different layers of identity and embark on a quest for authenticity. Each episode delves into how our backgrounds, cultures, and personal journeys sculpt our sense of self.

Every month, we journey into a new cultural landscape with our guests, sharing stories and experiences from the tapestry of life. Whether you're forging a path in a foreign land or simply curious about the forces that define us, The Identity Library invites you to write your own narrative or uncover fresh perspectives.

So, settle in with a cup of tea and immerse yourself in tales from around the globe with some sense of humor. If you don't find your story here, keep exploring—there are countless books with chapters waiting to be discovered. Identity Library is a podcast by WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2.

Veronika Becher 0:00
Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of identity library. My name is Veronika. Becher and today I'm joined by Abdullah Najjar, who is now looking at me because he just makes me laugh all the time. I promise to look away. We just, we started recording this episode, and we failed already twice. It's okay, it's okay. Let's just,

we'll just, we'll just take it for what it is. Do you

Abdullah Najjar 0:26
want to introduce yourself, maybe, um, to the audience, everyone who doesn't know? Yeah, yeah, no, of course. Uh, so I am, in addition to being Veronika's co host, and in addition to hosting my own podcast. I'm a student here at NC State University, and I'm in a master's program,

pursuing a degree in International Studies, and I am from Libya,

and that is for for those who are geographically challenged, that's in North Africa. I

Some people don't know it, and some people have never met a person from Libya. I've noticed that no even with Germany, like I just had recently a conversation with this girl who asked me what German is and what Germany is. And I was like, oh, that's shocking. She didn't know that well. She's younger, though, so it's okay. It's okay. These people have never heard of Germany. No, that's that's incredible. She wasn't even sure that there is a different country that is like across the globe.

Okay? Now we're not talking about geographically challenged people here. We're talking about, perhaps americany challenged.

I just coined that term when you're so, so immersed in a particular culture, maybe just one. This happens to be America, and you're just completely unaware of what exists outside of America or where you're from. It's very rare. I've never seen a case like that before, not knowing what Germany is, not knowing where anything is. I think

Veronika Becher 2:11
the craziest thing that so far that I've heard was um Germany, that we speak Spanish in Germany.

There's some other things that are also crazy, like going for like, when I lived in South Dakota, I had like, the weirdest experiences in high school. Okay, high school kids are a little bit crazy too. But basically, one of the guys came up to me and asked me if we ride horses because we don't have our streets and we are just living in the wilderness. And I was like, What about most, like, Mercedes

and all the other, you know, the big cars. Yes, cars like, I think right now, half of the population would have just,

I don't know what they would do to this kid, but basically, yeah, oh my god, I thought, I thought we were, I thought we were the ones, you know, Middle East, Middle Easterns or Arabs. I thought we were the ones who would be considered the people who ride camels. I get that a lot, like at one point my we got to notice person, my friends and I, we were here in the US, and we were just,

Abdullah Najjar 3:19
we were actually having fun with that person, because that person thought that we rode camels back home, and we decided to go with that joke, and I told that person with my friends, we were, you know, we were around that person and told my friends I really miss my camel. I left my camel behind.

I can't believe I left my camel

Veronika Becher 3:43
to use a joke that you told me yes today. Yes, it depends on the joke, though,

the one with how to call Muslim people. Oh, yes, please do that. Well, I mean, okay, I think some people, you know, I'm sure people would not be offended. I'm not offended by it, but you know, we've got to put a disclaimer

here. Disclaimer The beginning of this episode, I'm sure today we just talk about random things that might offend people. Please don't take it to heart. It's unfiltered. It's unfiltered. Oh, new podcast name.

There we go.

Abdullah Najjar 4:24
We're getting creative.

Veronika Becher 4:26
Okay, you can tell the joke.

Abdullah Najjar 4:31
Okay, so the funniest thing is, I was creating. I was creating a paper for one of my students, and

memes on Instagram. What's like the funniest answers that kids write to like some really random questions school? Yes, I experienced that almost on a daily basis, grading papers, or on a weekly basis, that is. But anyways, in one of these papers I was grading, did.

Person did not know how to refer to people who subscribe to the Islamic religion, and so instead of referring to them as Muslims, she would or he. I should probably not disclose the pronoun than the person, but it's already out there.

The person said, instead of saying Muslims, they said Islams,

and they kept referring to Muslims throughout the essay as Islams.

And it doesn't end there. I remember sending this to some of my friends who come from the region, the Arab world, and one of them said,

and I sent that picture screenshot, and he said, Welcome to Islam land.

And another one was like taking it too far. He said stuff that I probably won't reveal.

We have a sense of humor. Muslim Muslims have a sense of humor.

Veronika Becher 5:52
Basically, if you ever want to visit his country, welcome to Islam, where people are Islam. You know, so

you don't find any Muslims. Only is loves, yes, and you don't use cars, right? Oh, we just use camels, yes, yeah, yourself exactly

the desert. We are the desert. No, here's another funny thing, another funny story that's also taking it too far. I remember when I when I shaved my hair off and I grew my beard out,

Abdullah Najjar 6:27
I sent the picture to one of my friends who lives in the region, by the way, Middle East, and he's like, Damn boy, are you coming to kill us? Kill some Arabs.

He thought I was like, Special Forces guy, oh no. And

I was like, Okay, this beard is scaring people. I'm removing it. This is why. This is why we always wear boys news, boys hat. Yes, yeah. I don't want to scare people off. I don't want to give any impression that I'm killing them.

Veronika Becher 7:00
No, I think, like one of the biggest misconceptions that I've encountered was the whole German background history and how people so perceive our regime and how we live still in Germany, a little bit a sensitive topic. Let's say it this way, but apparently I encountered some people that we're not aware that we are out of this regime. Let's go this way. And some people assume that you know, a really well known person you know is my neighbor. And for anyone who doesn't know who I'm talking about, I don't know, I'm just gonna drop it. You know that Hitler is my neighbor or my cousin. And it was like me just going through those, like whole year living in South Dakota and getting the most absurd comments about how Hitler is my neighbor, my cousin, and do I even visit him daily, on daily basis, all time. And I was like, Are you joking, or were you serious about that? Because as a joke. Okay, I can live with that. But if you're serious, I'll be concerned. I'll be at a different level, concerned, till I think our English teacher stopped these kids of asking me these questions, because they were really,

Abdullah Najjar 8:14
yeah, they just, they, I, okay, that's rough. I'm just, no, it is actually not as rough, because

Veronika Becher 8:22
Germans, surprisingly, understand humor. We are actually good with this type of humor. I think the issue is, when you have a misconception later on and you actually are serious about these things, if it's a joke, it's okay. If it's something serious, accusing you of, like being, you know, in a certain regime, it's complicated. But, yeah, no, I get, I mean, I think even intra group jokes are sometimes. There are certain jokes that are not frowned upon when it's in between the group itself. But when you stretch out and people start, you know, thinking that they can say certain things without offending you.

Abdullah Najjar 9:03
I think that that becomes a problem because I can, I can share that I can, I can joke with my friends about, like, similar to the jokes that I was mentioning earlier.

Like, we could probably joke about these things because we are already well, we've known each other for a while, and we share pretty much like similar identities. So it's not it wouldn't be misconstrued that joke if I were to say it, or my friend would make that joke. But if someone from outside of that group makes a joke about the group, then it sort of becomes a problem, because you don't know what their intentions are, and you don't know where they're coming from, and if they actually are serious about it, right? Exactly? Um, yeah, I agree it is an issue. And sometimes people don't love and you don't know their sarcasm yet you sometimes also question if they're serious. It's a little problematic. So. But I also realized living in the United.

Veronika Becher 10:00
States changed my sense of humor a lot too, because sometimes we played the other day, we had some students from Germany over here through Fulbright, and we're playing cards against humanity.

If you heard of this game, yeah, we Yeah. I think we played it, yeah, exactly weeks ago. Yeah. Actually, they're your birthday? Yeah, I know. I know.

And, and basically, I really said the sense of humor that I have nowadays is so different than the German humor that is like 100% German, unless it switched completely into my German personality

identity library. Yes, exactly.

So what happened there was just that this girl found it really funny that, like, the cutest answers would actually be the funniest answers.

And I was like, Americans would never choose the cute answer in cuts against humanity. We would always choose, for some reason,

the one that is just inappropriate, right, in any kind of way, right? Yeah? But then she was like, That's adorable. I want to pick this one. It was kind of funny in the moment, but looking back, I was like, that's a different sense of humor that I never gonna understand completely.

Abdullah Najjar 11:21
Yeah. But change. I mean, it culture certainly changes, tweaks your behavior a little bit. You have to adjust it to a certain extent. But I think you were mentioning something earlier, before we started recording, about how you wouldn't want to wipe,

or rather discard your entire identity, or disavow of your identity simply to want to assimilate like you want to keep clinging on to some of your values and some of the things that you consider to be,

you know, core components of who you are, in spite of fact that you are in a culture that's pretty much very different, like you do want to cling on to certain things that make up the person that you are, and that's, I think, you may be made an interesting point earlier. Of you know, wanting to not necessarily shed everything about you in order to simulate you want to be who you are, but at the same time, you can still find a way to adjust or tweak certain things about yourself to not necessarily alienate people,

Veronika Becher 12:31
right? I mean, yeah, I was it was just a context of like, you know, an epiphany about culture differences and how your closest relationships affect you, and just realizing that sometimes, when you try to adjust to a different culture, what happens is you end up,

you end up adjusting so much that you almost put a mask on your face and disregard your own values, or you have to sometimes disregard your values, because just a simple example, Germans are more direct. We approach criticism, criticism, criticism, criticism, let's go. Let's go. We're good, we're good, we're all and feedback completely different than Americans do.

We seek it out actively. It's almost expected that you're gonna get bad.

I don't know, feedback because people want you to improve, but the way we get feedback is really direct, so we can offend someone by saying that the way we do but it has also some positive like sides to it, and there's a reason why we do the way we do it. So

when you switch countries, you realize that you can't just stick with these values and be direct all the time. It can be helpful, because you can resolve conflicts much easier. I think you can address things faster, and you don't beat around the bush. You just say it the way it is.

Why, sometimes it's also good, because you don't want to offend someone, so you rephrase it like you would do it in America.

So

based on that idea, I feel like it's difficult to uphold your own values, cultural values, but also switch completely to different one, different viewpoint, and adjust yourself completely outside of your natural like, let's call it job setting and open up to your friends about how you want to be treated and how you want to communicate, because your communication style is completely different than theirs.

Abdullah Najjar 14:29
That's, I think one element about, perhaps my culture is that there's a heightened,

a heightened understanding of the exchange of pleasantries. And what I mean by that is we have a lot of we beat around the bush a lot, and we use a lot of like, pet names and

certain terminology that showcases.

Is

a level of affection and acceptance that's not necessarily true. So for example, if I meet a person, a guy, and you know, we have a conversation, or we have something pretty brief, short encounter,

Speaker 1 15:18
we we use the word Habibi a lot, which literally translates to my lover. Oh my gosh. I feel like we had this conversation. But go ahead, did we really? I had the same one, but Habibi is used in German rap. Oh so much. It's one of the same things you remember when we had like how to greet someone, right, right?

Abdullah Najjar 15:44
Yeah, that's That's true. No, that's true. So that's the thing. Like you have, you use a lot of words and terminology that is supposed to that becomes so diluted that you don't really know whether it's genuine or not, because we haven't had an experience of brutal honesty or flagrant behavior. One of my professors likes to use the word flagrant, which is, I think, French, which translates to flagrant, quite blunt. We don't really have that. We always mask or sugarcoat our communication between one another which truly hides or obscures the intentions or the true

the message, the true message that you're trying to convey. And that's just a problem. And it's good. I think it's good to have a balance. It's good to be honest and blunt. But, you know, sometimes it's good to sort of have a little bit of a, you know,

an a, an exchange of pleasantries that's just so Arab like, for lack of a better word, you know what I mean. Do you think it always leads to miscommunication?

Maybe not always, but

in a lot of situations, it would because one is not being honest or genuine. I think I personally don't like it when people call me Habibi, you know, I don't because,

Veronika Becher 17:17
like, every single time I'm gonna see you, I'm gonna just shot across the whole campus.

Abdullah Najjar 17:23
I'm gonna run the other either way, I'm gonna like, I don't know this person,

but it's like, it's not, I don't really like it, because I think we've diluted the word so much that it lost its meaning. And I like giving words justice or expressions justice I want. If I'm if I say, if I say that someone is a friend of mine, or if I say that's a best friend, or if I say that's my special someone, like I truly mean it when I say it, I wouldn't use that in a loose and quick way, as much as

you know these people would when they use the word Habibi, it's just it lost its meaning. And when you keep using it a lot, and when you use other words a lot that express a level of affection that's not necessarily true, it just it, you're essentially hiding the true nature of or obscuring the relationship, or the true nature of that communication, and that might not always to your question lead, you know, to trouble or sort of collapse, but it creates problems. It creates a rift, because it's like, well, where are we? Like, where where do we stand? What or what are we, you know,

so that that's why I prefer

more honesty, unless, unless of this, this sort of,

Veronika Becher 18:50
less of that exchange. That's not that, that's not real. Do you feel the same way about nicknames? Because I feel like I tend to not introduce myself with my nicknames, I have like ton of them. For some reason, people just try to shorten up my name because it's too long for everyone's opinion. Um. The thing is, so I realize when I introduce myself of a nickname, people only use my nickname, or what I don't like is when people switch to my nickname without knowing me on a personal basis. It's I've experienced this in college in Germany when we're oh my gosh, when a girl, she addressed me as vero, just like my first four letters. And in Germany, a lot of people call me just Vero. It, you know, the nickname established itself through playing volleyball all the time, and when a ball is like, flying across the court, you don't want to, you know, shout the whole name. So people just start calling me vero because it's shorter and faster to the point. And when I need to, like, you know, I don't know, make a point, people just would use my nickname. And I, I liked it. I didn't mind.

Ended, you know, when some people called me V there were so many nicknames, a ton of them, but it's strange when she walked up to me and she called me vero, like we on a personal good basis, like we know each other outside of school, but we weren't even on good terms,

and that just threw me off. And I was like, I don't want anyone to use my nickname without actually being on the spaces with me, because a nickname is a personal relationship with me, almost like someone who is a close friend to me, that knows me for long enough and that I'm okay with using my nickname. She didn't ask me. She just, she just used it. So I'm really curious what you say a nickname is a thing that also might be like indirect communication, or is it a different case completely? Yeah, well, well, I do want to first off say that this is one thing that I maybe don't have a strong attachment to the the idea of of the nickname. We use a lot of nicknames, of course. I mean, I think in most cultures, nicknames are, you know, I guess, commonly used. I think for me, when I do have different variations of my name,

Abdullah Najjar 21:15
people call me different things, obviously, you know, they would be considered nicknames. My mom will probably call me a Buddha. My friends would probably call me Abdu. Here in the US people, some people call me Abdul.

Actually my professor, you know he would, he would call me Abdul, my the one that I assist at the department. But I never really found

I might be like, huh, when someone calls me by my nickname without knowing me personally, right? That might trigger a reaction, but I wouldn't this is where I probably wouldn't feel offended,

because I think my lack of attachment to that did an idea of how, I guess

how personal I consider my name is or my nicknames are.

But you know, I think the more you get to know a person, the more you're sort of,

the more maybe a person gets to know you, the more you reveal and the more you are comfortable with them.

One doesn't have to take things, you know, just take it slow. You don't have to be too quick. But when it, when it, when, essentially, when go boy, goes back to nicknames. I

generally speaking, I don't think I've ever called anyone or anybody by their nickname. I love using people's names. Like, I really think, even when I text people, when I reach out to people, I I use their name, you know, and I think addressing a person with their name, I think, like, it triggers something like, especially if you text someone like you will notice a difference, like, if someone texts you with, Hey, do you want to hang out tonight? And if someone texts you with a different someone else texts you and says, Hey, Veronica, do you want to hang out tonight? It's so different. And and I'm sure even if I you know, even if these are two of your closest friends, one message seems to be more personal, the other can be too generic. Even when you look at your email and you have like a spam on your spam folder, like you notice how the greeting starts with Hey or Hi, like you immediately you're like, yeah, that person is like that. That's definitely a spam but when it's like, when you see your name at first, like, the first thing you see your name, it says, Hi Veronica, or Dear Veronica, like you, you notice that, okay, that that part, that specific part, immediately established something intimate or something personal, and you were more inclined to read through that email than perhaps the one that didn't include your name, because you would have, maybe you have questions or you have concerns, but that's just, you know, I stretched out a little bit, and I digress, and use the email example, but the point that I'm trying to get at is I don't really have a lot of, like, A strong attachment to, I guess, nicknames, I would be surprised. Obviously, someone called me use a nickname to refer to me without knowing me personally. But at the same time, I never felt that that sort of offended me. But I again, I really like making my communications with people more personal. And these are the subtle things. You know, I might not use their nickname, but I would use their name.

And so I think, you know, it's one of the things that people, it's one of it's one of your

it's one of those things about your identity. You know, name is one of them.

Yeah, and so if that does not, it's not acknowledged. It's like you've practically did not acknowledge one of the main sort of components of who a person is. So that's one level of acknowledgement using their name. And that's something I learned over the years. You know,

I receive a lot of I communicate with a lot of people. I receive a lot of texts, and you do notice a difference with with, you know, the different messages that you receive, where one is more feels more personal, where I see my name and the other ones where, and I'm sure it's not intentional, but if I were to just, you know, from the outside looking in, if I just post all these messages, I can see the ones that stand out because they felt more personal inqui My name, but I don't know. I don't know if that's something you kind of maybe, maybe I'm painting a rough sketch here that maybe you haven't put a lot of thought into, but I'd love to hear sort of where you stand on it.

Veronika Becher 25:57
So many questions.

Like, and then you answered one of them. I was thinking of identity in the way of we like, you know, a name can be attached to identity, right? We recall like, if someone calls our name, we react. If someone says something that is similar to our name, we also react, right? Subconsciously, even if we like, completely focus on one, like discussion, we hear it and we like, we just start paying attention, right? So what I'm curious, would you say

it holds a huge like, like, a huge amount of,

how do you phrase that? Would you say your name is so important for your own identity, or it's something that just is, like a supplementary like, something you just add to your identity as a name? Yeah? No, that's a good question. It just sorry if I have one last thing like, so you understand where I'm coming from, right? Better example, but we were talking about Hitler and so on. If you think about concentration camps, really heavy topic. What they did, you probably know that they gave people numbers instead of names, so they stripped down their identity as being, like having an identity by giving them just a number. That should

Abdullah Najjar 27:22
you know? Yeah, I have, I have an example. Yes.

Cool. No, okay, no, sorry, the example that I'm gonna mention because it relates to what you're saying. But I got a little too excited here, because I had an example. Okay, so

what one? One, there's, a movie about assassins that's called, yeah, it's called hitman. And essentially, what this agency does is that it takes all of these orphans and they train them, they put them through this rigorous, you know, training path in order to become human machines, and are able to assassinate people and perform the duties of this agency.

But the catch is, maybe it wouldn't be considered a catch, but the part that relates to what you were saying, and the historical example, is that all of these orphans are given numbers, not names, and you have agent 47 or you have agent 45 or agent 46

they're giving numbers and so names, even when you like stereotypically, when you think of a particular name, like names create an image in our mind, you know, an identity, or a person like Greg, you might think of like or Gary. There's a stereotype of Gary, Indiana, you know, the lame duck, the couch potato,

right? So names are powerful, and I think they do play an important role in a person's identity or who a person is. Because I do think that maybe if someone did not know me as Abdullah, or, you know, the example of the time when

you know I was, I was known as a John, you know, which is a different story that we can get into later. But anyways, there's, there's an entirely different. I think the perspective sort of shifts like even when, when someone,

if someone, has exposure to an Arabic culture, and they hear my name, say an American person, they hear my name, they have a level of exposure to Arabic culture that would sort of shape, perhaps in the beginning, how they think of me, because that name carries a particular weight. It not only carries me as a person, but it carries the culture and the different facets of that culture from which the name comes from. And so I think to me,

and that's when I.

I admit that I forgot your question, but, but I think, I think names, I guess your question was whether or not they're important to one's identity, right? And if it's something that is the main thing about identity, almost, or it's something just adds to your identity, accessory or complimentary, I see what you're saying. I think, I truly think they can be both because

you are not. You didn't choose your name unless at some point of your life you chose to identify as something or the other. But you are given that name from from from the beginning, you know, from the day you were born, you were given that name. And that's, I think, one of the most consistent elements of who you are or what you are, and so it has accompanied you for almost every stage of your life. And if that doesn't sort of, if that wasn't a core component of who you are, then I would be interested to know what other components that accompanied you for almost every part of your life that you sort of maybe associate with or make up

a part of who you are. I think your name has been,

or always will be, a consistent part of who you are, and it carries a weight. It carries not just the person that you are, but perhaps the culture that you come from, and the meaning to it. Because names, some some names have meanings like I would, my name would be translated as you know, roughly speaking, the servant of God, you know,

and that that

you know that has a meaning to it, it also so it carries that meaning. It carries the the culture from which it comes from. It carries the person who's who associates with that name. So it can be quite an important element of who you are, but it could also be considered an accessory if you are given a name that you do not necessarily agree with or you don't have maybe a strong attachment to, because some people are given names that at some point in their lives they decide to discard and adopt a different one. So it's like, but you see people adopt names, right? And so that means they are important. I don't know. I just it's an interesting question that I don't think I've given a lot of thought about my grandma's name was yevdekia, or there's a really old, old fashioned Russian name, but we never called her yevdekir, and she didn't like the name either.

Veronika Becher 32:37
Every single time we will call her Lucia, and Lucia is a different, like, name, and so every single time when I would greet her, I'm like, Baba Lucia. So babuska is like, the like, grandma, and Baba is just like, usually it can be also an offending way, like you can actually offend someone, but if it's someone in your family who's like, I don't know, like a grandchild saying that it's okay. It's, like, actually acceptable. And people do it all the time, and so we never use her full name. And I was just thinking about that as well as, like, if you

attend, you know, when you have like, a middle name and, like, another name, and you have like, five names and based on your grandma and grandpa and who else? Hyphenated names? Yes, middle name. It's so interesting how a tradition or like a family background can be carried into, like your own name. Like we in Germany, we don't have we don't have middle names at all. We don't use middle names. It's so strange, but Americans do, and I remember my host family back then, when my host mom was pregnant, they were deciding on the name, and they couldn't decide because the initials would be so significant too on how people perceive you. So just like AJ or ad or like, it's just the first and two initials based on your middle name and your first name hold also a huge, huge significance in your culture too. But then in other cultures, you just disregard it completely, like I'm written Veronica with a K. What is like? Basically just done because my parents wanted something more universal. Is C, and Russian is an S, if you write this way. So writing it with a K makes it actually look more Russian. But at same time, it's also used in other countries, and you would not misunderstand the name, right?

And we in Russia, for instance, you don't use you are not on first name basis most of the time. So what we have, I don't know if I ever mentioned to you, we have a word called orchestra. What is based on your dad's first name, and you create an orchestra, what is not a

what is it's not a last name, it's not a first name, it's a special name.

Name that you get. Let's go this way, based on your dad's name, and if you're female or male, you attach a specific ending to it. So even though I cannot, well, there are, my dad's name is Andre, and I will be considered Andrey VNA. V

Na is the Russian like, the like that would be like my orchestra. And because I'm female, you attach of na Andrei beach would be like the actual like, um, like, male version of it. And people in school would call you only based on this name. They actually never use, or rarely use you, like your first name. And I've seen the same thing. I think it's in Japanese culture where first names are so intimate, and that's where we come back to the topic with nicknames and calling someone Habibi and so on. I think people specifically don't use actually your first name. They use your last name more because it holds such a bigger value in how close you are to someone using certain names or like calling someone, I think it's in Korean, like aunt or uncle. And then you have certain like names depending on how old you are in comparison to your own age. And then you could adjust it and call someone like in a specific way because of your age gap that you have. I hope that sounds too confusing, but no, no, I have a couple of things if you may just say about this. One thing is, I'd love to maybe take it back to culture here.

Abdullah Najjar 36:35
One thing that I want to share is that back home in Libya, when

first off, you have this, this,

this idea of a hyphenated name, which I'm sure you you've, you've, you've, you're aware of as well. You hear, for example, a person

called Mary Beth like to you know, two names hyphenated, or, you know Mary Jane, or, you know these, these types of things. And we also have, so we have that, and we also have a middle name, though it is the father's name. And I as a, as an Abdullah, my full name would be Abdullah, Nabil Najar. So my first name is Abdullah. My middle name is actually my father's name, and obviously my last name is Najar. So even my sister, you know the that name doesn't switch based off of the gender of the of the person, or the son or the daughter, like, it stays the same. So my sister, Khadijah, Nabil nachar, the same middle name remains consistent and and that's interesting, because I never, I never knew that in the United States, people had middle names that that were actually their name, you know, like,

you know you have John say it's a John Smith. You have a middle name in there, John Taylor Smith, for example. Like that middle name is still their name. It's not somebody else's. So that's one thing I wanted to mention. The other thing that, and I love to be that you brought up the subject of names, because, oh my goodness. Yesterday, when I was recording my podcast, when I was talking to this guy, my good friend, Mick Mulroy, about stoicism, one thing that we I brought up was that was the early the early stoic. His name was Epictetus, I believe. And one thing that, you know, I talked about, a couple of things about Epictetus, where he's, you know, what his belief system systems are, and what he thinks about external events and different control that we have over these things, and what it's like to be a stoic. And then, when my friend Mick started talking about Epictetus, one thing he mentioned that I didn't know was that we don't actually know the real name of Epictetus, like he was, he was born a slave, and he was, you know, I think that name, I think translates to slave,

and we don't really, he never adopted a different name, like we don't really know his actual name, And

that,

like that idea of being born perhaps nameless, or acquiring a name, or perhaps shedding your own name, the only the consistent variable here is still the name, which means it does hold a tremendous amount of weight and it has a lot of defining characteristics that are stereotypical. And one other thing that I want to mention, and then maybe you can tell

me more more about what you think about this is that

in one book that I was reading that's called a mercy

you, it's set in the early.

The early in early colonial America, in the 16th century, I believe, or 17th century, you have a family deciding to adopt,

at the time, a very religious Presbyterian family deciding to adopt a Native American Girl. And in one of the scenes, you see how this this family is trying to wipe out the identity of that Native American Girl, and one of the things that they do is that they give her a name, a different name than the one that she's born with, which means that, again, names just carry tremendous weight, and they give an impression of a person like we have so many. A lot of images get conjured up in our minds when we hear a particular name. And I remember making a joke, sharing a joke with you about your name, Veronica, and what sort of you know, movie that I remember and seen, and it's a funny, hilarious scene of a girl named Veronica. Yeah. And so, you know, you hear that name, and something is triggered in your in your mind, you know, just you can't. There are certain people you can't really, whose names you just can't replace, where you're like,

you know,

Veronika Becher 41:15
I sometimes have that experience where I meet a person who leaves tremendous impact on me. They go by a particular name, and then I meet another person who shares that very exact same name, but they don't have where I'm like, No, you're not a John or no, you're not a Lucy. There's only one Lucy. You know, it's like, it's interesting. I don't know. It's the same way when you meet someone you have a bad experience with and you internally already judge the other person based on their name. You're like, Oh, I didn't like Victoria. This Victoria is going to be the same. So maybe paying attention to how we judge and perceive people based on the name is really important. And it's also it's also really like crazy, because it's your parents that give you the name that will determine your whole life. There's even a thing about last maybe a study that was super interesting. It's concerning more last names. But since in Germany, in school, we really often go more by last name them by first name. Maybe elementary school you would switch. But the older you get, the more people pay attention to your last name. And there's a study done. I'm not sure where, like what university did it, but it's depending on where you are on the list, like on the roaster and where your last name is located. You can see who will get better grades statistically speaking. So if you're on the top, I think 10 placements in the class list, you will probably get better grades than someone who's on the bottom of the list, because we associate good grades and good achievements of people that have last names in the top of a roaster. And so I'm not saying that. That's why I got into NC State. I do have a really, like, you know, like first first 10 people roaster name,

but it's the same. It goes the same way. If you would switch your to your first name, and my first name is, like, completely on the bottom, you again have the same, same thing, and you most likely it's the same thing. There's a bias I just talked about with my friend the other day, where the first thing you hear and the last thing you hear are the things that stick, stay with you. There's a specific like, bias of what you remember based on the conversation, based on like the name, and so if your name is in the beginning of the Rosa and in the end, you most likely will remember these people in your class than someone who's in between. So I'm so sorry if you're in between. I'm sorry to tell you to be in between, yes,

but that's just a thought that came and crossed my mind. But I think,

Abdullah Najjar 44:02
but, yeah, I just, I think that even that's even how, in general, how we orient our lives, we like to have, maybe for because we, you know, for simplicity's sake, we always look at things in terms like of a binary right ones and zeros, you know, top, bottom, right, left, good, yeah, good, right, yeah. So top of the list, bottom of the list. We don't look at the ones in the middle, but there's always a gray area. But we rarely, you know, see that that that gray area. And so that's why all of that nuance gets forgotten. And if you apply it back to the example of the roster, all of those middle names, the names in the middle, are forgotten. And you know, even with like, it's interesting that you mentioned a conversation and how, you know, maybe we remember the beginning and the end.

Veronika Becher 45:00
And because it's like all of that nuance is oftentimes not captured. Because I guess human beings like simplicity, even though we're complex. I'm sure our minds are complex, but we always look at things from a very binary perspective, right? You know, good or bad, north or south, east or west, one or two, liberal or conservative. And maybe that's the reason why nicknames also so alluring to us, having a shorter name, something you can say much faster. Simpler, the simpler, the better. Maybe that's also the reason why we do it like maybe there isn't even it's just it feels like simpler is better, like the simple the simpler way in life is easier and better if I can actually skip the workout and get my abs without even Yes, I would take this path. Right? We want to your brain is almost like there's this thing where your brain tries to do everything and cans to not do anything. So you being on the couch is a normal stage of your brain being happy. You being a couch potato is your brain being happy the moment you actually need to get up and get off your phone is when your brain hits you right now and it's like, why are we doing that? This is a safe place being a couch potato. So we try to simplify everything from like, our names, our identity, uh, putting people into boxes. There are so many things in layers, I think where supplice Simplicity comes into play. But I think just names are really interesting in the backgrounds. And

Abdullah Najjar 46:35
I think we could even have a second episode about names. Oh, I'm sure I can't believe that that was like, you never really think about these things. I never like your questions put me in a position where I was like, Man, this is actually pretty interesting stuff that I never thought about, but I had, like, I already had maybe a few ideas in mind, but

Veronika Becher 46:55
it's, yeah, no. Names are just such an interesting subject. They're, I mean, origin of names, why we use the names that we use, and why? Like, even, I'm sure you've, you told me about this, and we talked about it before, how, even in certain resumes, when you look at the name, it's very telling, right? Of maybe where the person is from, who they are, whether or not they should be accepted, or whether or not, you know, yeah, my my dad's friend, or, like, from work, he actually decided to accept his wife's last name instead of, like, you know, going the traditional path, because she had a Dutch last name. And really often Dutch companies, for some reason, hi, you if you have a Dutch last name. And so he gave up his German last name to have a Dutch last name to get accepted. He got the job because of his last name. It's It's so crazy, if you think this way, that a last name, in name can give you like you don't even need a picture. You don't need to put the thing where you say a resume shouldn't have a picture, and then you're actually, like, not going to judge the person, you will, because, yeah, it name can give you, like, an image of what the person could be. And if we were to play a game right now, you and I, if I were to say,

Abdullah Najjar 48:18
if I were to give you the name Arthur, and if I were to give you the name Gary, you probably would have very different images in your mind who Arthur is and who Gary is. Arthur, I think of like, um, Great Britain for some reason, like, you know, like with the with the sport, what's the what's the story? But Arthur, the the sword? Yeah, they do a lot of theater plays about it. I and then Gary, for some reason, I think of someone typical American even,

Veronika Becher 48:50
okay, I don't want to say typical American anymore, but I wanted to say something like, I was thinking of like farmland, exactly. You see how? So you see that image, right? We're guilty of it as well. It's not the ones at the HR department.

Abdullah Najjar 49:06
He's like exposing me. No, no, I'm also guilty of it. I'm honestly Yes, names are powerful. And if I were presented with, if you told me you had two friends, you had an Arthur and a Gary, I would probably in my mind, and I'm guilty of it. I probably thinking of an Arthur as someone who may be more refined, you know, just Yes, and Gary the opposite, exactly. So you do the same thing. And so that's my dear listeners. Is why we double check and meet people before we judge them based on the name? We forget.

Veronika Becher 49:41
I forget names all time. That's even worse, like I feel like I just stripped them down their identity. I just forget names, and I can't remember and recall them, not because I don't try. It's just super difficult in certain names I can't even properly, you know, comprehend, understand, even.

Remember, because I've never heard them before, and I'm like, How do you pronounce this name? Like, I don't even know how to remember. I literally have lists with names in it where I keep track of names.

Abdullah Najjar 50:14
Basically, yeah,

Veronika Becher 50:17
we probably have to do your second episode about names and not like identity. But I think it was a nice, nice kind of touch on names. And if you ever see an application and you feel like this name represents something that you've seen, and probably a lot of people pick names based on TV shows, but or like famous people, um, please just be mindful that this person might be completely different Gary,

or a completely different art fair, yes, than you anticipated. So thank you so much for being on podcast, and I hope we're gonna tell the John story next time. So yes, it's gonna be hilarious. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this, Veronica. Thank you so much too, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend, wonderful starting into the week, and hear from you guys over me soon. Bye, bye. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai