Name, Identity, and Meaning: How the name "ERM" or "Early Returned Missionary" Ought to Be Eliminated

In my last post, I talked about the names of the six main characters in Moby Dick and did a bit of amateur research on the origins and meanings behind those names. I know that some authors name their characters specific names because the name will add deeper meaning to the character and to the story. I wanted to see if this was the case with Herman Melville. What I found was that for the most part, the names in Moby Dick could be interchangeable with other names, but two at least seem to have been deliberately given their names (Ahab and Ishmael). We see the biblical references surrouding those names pretty consistently throughout the novel. Yet even those characters, could have been given a different name (say, Solomon instead of Ahab, or Jacob instead of Ishmael. The names would have served the same purposes and meanings).

I wanted to do more research into names and the meaning they hold for us. I asked my friends on Facebook to answer a series of questions. I originally posted one of them also on Google + and Twitter, but only one person replied to my Google + post and no one replied on Twitter (sad!), but I got a lot of replies on Facebook so I decided to just stick with them. I posted the questions about once every hour, and some people really started getting into them. It was fun for me to receive the replies. Now, I'm going to be a good English major and analyze those answers and draw some conclusions from them.

Let's start with the least intimidating of the questions: Why were you named ____? (Were you named after someone? Did your parents just like the name?) What does your name mean? If the main character of a book was created with you in mind, would you want the character to have your name or another name?

Here were the answers:

 

As I suspected, everyone knew why they were named what they were named and several knew what their names meant. And most everyone that answered the third question said that they would be fine with their name being used as the main character in a book, which surprised me as I thought more people would want their identities kept secret, but it turns out most would be excited to have the main character in a book named after them. Another person identified well with a famous book character. This to me showed that people identify strongly with their names; in other words, names are a strong part of a person's identity. If someone doesn't like their name, they generally go through some lengths to change it, right? They do not want that name as part of their identity. (Yes, I know I completely abused the singular vs. plural rules of grammar, but no one really cares, right?).

Okay, next I decided to start asking about something closer to my heart. I wanted people's instinctual reactions to the names (or titles) "returned missionary" or "early returned missionary." Here are the replies for "returned missionary."

The responses vary from serious to light-hearted. If everyone was honest about writing down their first-instinct response then the general pictures that comes to mind is of a young LDS male, desirable for marriage, who just did something amazing, although he might not have a clue what he's going to do next and he's probably going to be awkward until he settles back in to normal life.

I'd say that's generally the first thing that comes to my mind too. Again, the answers varied, but those were the general agreements. 

Here are the responses for "early returned missionary":

The answers to this questions were much more serious. Usually people responded with some kind of reason for why the missionary returned home early, and it's never a happy reason. Most also show a genuine concern for the person's well-being. Some said that they usually think, "None of my business," which some could interpret as "I want nothing to do with this," but I think it was meant more as, "It's not my place to judge this person." Others alluded to dying or not being able to "hack it." One person said, "Relief."

None of these responses are wrong or bad. They are all accurate in one way or another. Most are kind. But they are markedly different from the spiritual/light-hearted responses the name "returned missionary" received. "Early returned missionary" is different from "returned missionary."

Do you see where I might be going with this? Probably. Humor me though while I explain/expound.

 When I came home early from my mission (physical illness was the reason), I was fortunate enough to have a good support group around me, and for the most part I did not feel harshly judged for coming home early. Yet while I did not exactly feel judged, I did feel "marked." Everyone in my ward knew I had come home early. My friends knew. My family knew. People asked me if I was going to go back to the field. They asked when. When I chose to stay home, people asked me if I had forced myself to go on a mission when maybe I wasn't supposed to. I didn't have answers to these questions. I just wanted them to stop. I had served a mission!! It was short, but I had served one! But I hadn't served it for the expected amount of time, and therefore I had failed. I had done something wrong and I hadn't repented well enough for it; I hadn't had enough faith; because if I had repented well enough or had enough faith I would have been healed and I would still be on a mission. God would still be able to use me. 

But no, I was an early returned missionary. An ERM. I cringed every time somebody called me either name. It hurt. "That title will haunt me forever," I thought. 

I asked my friends one last question. Would you say that "returned missionary" is a name one earns or is it a name that should be given to anyone who comes home from a mission?

 

 

It sounds like the general consensus was, "If you served a mission and are now home, no matter the length of time in the field, and no matter your thoughts and intentions while serving a mission, you are a returned missionary. Whether or not you served honorably is another thing."

I was so surprised by these responses. I thought most people would say that, "You are a returned missionary if you served the 18-24 months or if you came home early but it wasn't your fault." But no, almost everyone said that if you serve a mission and come back, you are a returned missionary.

So where did Early Returned Missionary/ERM come from?  My guess is that it started on a forum somewhere for those trying to help missionaries who return home early. It sounds like it was a easy way to distinguish online between someone who came home early and someone who served the amount of time. "Returned missionary" is still in the title, but it is marked with "Early." 

Some of my friends think that we should just get rid of the terms "returned missionary" and "RM" altogether. They think it encourages us to label each other, or in other words to judge each other, and in a church that emphasizes Christlike behavior those labels ought to be done away with.

They might be right. But even if they are, I think that the names "returned missionary" and "RM" are going to stick around a little longer. As members of the church, we've been encouraged to stop calling ourselves "Mormon," but that name is dying hard. Why? I think its become part of our identity for so long.

What I personally would like to see happen is the death of the name/term/title/(whatever you want to call it) "Early returned missionary," or "ERM." Especially "ERM." I recognize that it is not meant to hurt those who did return early, (or if it is, shame on whoever uses it that way!), but it does. It hurts a lot. It's not a title of honor. It's not something I want following me around the rest of my life. Even if I returned home early because I made a mistake and was caught, I would  not deserve to be called an ERM the rest of my life. It's like The Scarlet Letter that Hester Prynne has to wear the rest of her life. She sinned and she needed to be held accountable for that, but being marked for the rest of her life was unfair, especially when so many others were committing sins (even the same sin!) all around her.

On my website, www.earlyhomecoming.com, I avoid the terms "early returned missionary" and "ERM." I recognize that many, many people are using these terms for good as they study the effects of returning home early from a mission. It's a non-wordy way to say, "a missionary who returned home early." But it's unfair, and I would hate to see it become a popular term used in the church. So please, let's drop it. And maybe, let's drop "returned missionary" too, and just leave it at "I served a mission."

There is more that I can go into about this. I could get all doctrinal about missionaries and missionary work, but I'm not going to, at least not in this blog post. Maybe in a future one. For now, I'm just going to ask that we remember the importance of names, how they serve as our identities, and how no one wants anything to tarnish their name, not even a well-meant title. If we don't like something, we get rid of it. We change our  names. But if we're in a society that won't let us forget our names, our identites,  we either become depressed or indifferent, or we escape. According to a study done by the University of Utah, "34 percent of those who returned early went through a period of inactivity in the church. One third of those never returned to activity." 

This is a problem. I don't know how many of those 34% were called "ERM's" or "Early Returned Missionary," but I'm positive that they felt marked in some way.

So here's my call to action: Let's get rid of the term "ERM" or "Early Returned Missionary" from our vocabulary, from our culture, as much as possible. I recognize that the names will likely still be used in some circumstances for good, like as in forums, but as much as possible let's just get rid of them. Let's stop calling each other undesirable names. Let's not be like Captain Ahab's mother who named him after a wicked king because of a "foolish, ignorant whim."  Let's not wrong each other because we have hard times. Let's just help each other. Let's change our culture.

What's in a name? An Exploration of the Names of the Six Main Characters of Moby Dick

I love that line in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet ("What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet?" Act II Scene II Lines 46-47).

I decided to put Shakespeare's words to the test and look at the names of the six main characters in Moby Dick. I wanted to see if there was any extra significance to their names, or if they really were just names. I decided to look up the origins of the names, their meanings, and then the text surrounding their names in Moby Dick.

Origins

I used Google Translate to look up the origins of their names. Here is what I found:

Ahab: German
Queequeg: no response, but Spanish was guessed before I finished typing the name.
Ishmael: no response, but English and Albanian were guessed.
Stubb: Finnish
Starbuck: no response, but Italian, English, German, Lithuanian were guessed.
Flask: no response, but Portuguese and Albanian were guessed.

Then, just for kicks, I decided to see if their names would translate to a language completley different from English. Here are their names in Japanese:

Ahab: アハブ
Queequeg:  would not translate
Ishmael: イシマエル 
Stubb: would not translate
Starbuck: スターバック  
Flask: フラスコ 

The names translated back to English from Japanese name perfectly each time. When I translated the Japanese name to another language like Russian or Alabanian and then back to English, it sometimes went back to the way the  name was in English (like for Ishmael), but a different translation (such as Flask to bulb).

Continued Research into Origins and Meanings

I decided to do some more research into the origin/meaning of the names and came across the site Behindthename.com. I stuck each name into the search bar and below are the screen shots of what appeared.

The only names Behindthename.com was able to find anything for was Ahab and Ishmael (both Hebrew names that English speakers name their children). Both names are biblical, which may explain why there is so much Biblical language in the book (it fits the two main characters). Starbuck had a popular culture reference, but nothing to do with Moby Dick.

In the Text

I decided to look at the text itself to see if there were any words that were commonly linked with each of these six characters. The words listed below are both those used to describe the characters, phrases near the names that I found interesting, or words that often appeared near the name at multiple points in the text.

Ahab: precise agency, inscrutable, leaped after his prey, Captain, peculiar fortunes, side-lunging strides, commanded, a queer man, grand, godly, ungodlike, above the common, a crowned king, a wicked name, King,  "I am a cannon-ball."

Queequeg: Ramadan,  entertaining, absurd notions, content, knew, harpoon, pagan, cannibal, tomahawk, savages, creature, civilized, alone, heathen, Christian, affectionate, ambitious, embrace, kill-e, Yojo.
"A native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. it is not down in any  map; true places never are."

Ishmael: Call me, one, dear, don't be too particular, said I, muttered I, thine, thought I, I, thy, unlettered. Talks to himself a lot. Lots of bibilical language--he is the narrator.

Stubb: luck, aye, easy, pipe, mate, humorous, speechless a moment, involuntarily retreated, old man, wise, laugh, odd, peculiar, Mr., drawled,  counted upon, cheered, cried, supper, Starbuck, Flask, Ahab

Starbuck: lively, friend, chief mate, courage, fortitude, Mr., murmured, paled, right-mindedness, coerced will, cooly and adroitly balancing himself, careful, prudent, humane, too good a fellow, Stubb, Flask, Ahab
"A native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent"

Flask: Mr., one of the wrought ones, little, curious, helped himself, presume, mate, Starbuck, Stubb, Ahab, cruel, cried, water-bearer, "Why don't ye be sensible?", startled

While these words provide more character sketches than origins or meanings of the names, I did find it interesting how one could do a mere search of each character's name and find out a surprising amount about each character before ever reading the text. Sometimes I was able to find out where certain characters were from, like Queequeg or Starbuck. It looks like Starbuck's name is a surname, not a first name like I had assumed in my original searches, same with Stubb and Flask. Let's see if that changes things.

Surnames

I went to ancestry.com to learn the meaning behind the surnames. Here are screen shots of what I found:

I decided to look up Queequeg just in case something returned. I guess not.  It looks like the other names are largely from Great Britain, particularly England (or Ireland for Flask). This isn't too surprising since most white people in the United States (particularly Nantucket, Massachusetts) at this time were from England.

Queequeg

I decided to just do a Google Search, "What does Queequeg mean?" and see what I got. I found a blog post that has a passage I really liked in relation to my own blog post: "Queequeg, a cannibal prince whose very name seems devoid of meaning, is a strange combination of everything exotic and foreign to Ishmael." His name is "devoid of meaning." That does seem quite suitable for Queequeg's character. He has so much character yet he is one of the more difficult characters to understand. Well-played, Melville.

Conclusion
I don't know how much thought Herman Melville put into the names of his characters, but it seems to me like he put in at least some. He certainly thought about who they were and what they represented to the reader, to the other characters, and to themselves. While I'm not sure that these characters could not have been called by any other name, I do think the names, particuarly Ahab's and Ishmael's, were well chosen because of the extra religious symbolism they give to their characters. This was an interesting exercise for me to do and I'm glad that I was able to use these tools to look a little more deeply into the names of these six characters.