“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”

That reference is of course a line written by William Shakespeare from the play Romeo and Juliet to convey that the naming of things is irrelevant.

But, I want to explore that. 

My friend has a theory that asking someone “how did you get your name?” is an noninvasive way to hear about their origin story and a way to learn a lot about them. It taps into past generations of humans with how we are given our names - while it is a seemingly benign question, it possibly can be an astute window into the stories we tell ourselves about our lives.

My guest for this episode, Erwin Raphael McManus, speaker & author of “Mind Shift” has a very unique name as well as backstory so I thought he’d be the perfect person to test this hypothesis. 

Throughout the episode he answers questions like…

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices