What's in a Name?

Albert Einstein. Photo:Sophie Delar on Wikipedia

In Hebrew the name is ABRAHAM, which then becomes AVRAM, IBRAHIM, ABRAMO, ALBERT, ALBRECHT,

ALOUBÉ, with the long list of pet names such as AVRAMICO or ALBERTUCCIO.

Think also of ADAM, our original father. 

I'm called Avram, Bertie, Albert, or Alberto, since my mother was British and my father Italian. Alberto is what my parents chose; it sounds harmonious, poetic, and its syllables, well detached, AL-BER-TO, have a nice, forceful ring.

It is of German / Teutonic origin.

AL-BE-RT, or AL-BRECHT, pronounced in that language, it inspires a certain grandeur, a harshness, and I would add, grandiloquence, but it is also princely, for kings too bear the name.

Like Albert, Queen Victoria's beloved Prince consort, or the Knight-King of Belgium, Albert I, who, with his wife, the German-born Elisabeth von Wittelsbach, were heroes in both the First and Second World War, she, fighting against her own people, to protect the population of her newly adopted nation.

Elisabeth, now Queen of Belgium, saved many Jews, Albert Einstein and Yehudi Menuhin, among them, who both became lifelong friends.

But Albert is also the name of evil-minded scientists, like the Nazi, Albert Speer, or, closer to us, Albert Wesker, who wished to spread a deadly virus in order to destroy much of humanity and gain power, by instilling fear in the hearts and souls of the remaining terrians, especially the gullible and the downtrodden.

One often forgets that Albert derives from the biblical Hebrew Abraham, who has transmitted to us the Ten Commandments.

So, what's in a name?

Alberto, in this instance? NOTHING, or rather something I, the bearer, am stuck with. I am, in a manner of speaking, prisoner of these syllables, the way one is a prisoner of his mother tongue, for it was imposed on him since childhood.

Metaphors are also prisons, we need them to translate and explain a phrase, an expression other people don't readily understand, and oftentimes, we ourselves don't quite comprehend.

Communication is a very inadequate science. The Italians have a saying: »Traduttore, traditore ».

Why else do families fight, couples divorce, people fight wars and kill each other? Because, we, who believe, are superior to the rest of the animal world and try to dominate them, depleting the natural resources for our own selfish needs, creating terrible environmental disasters, destroying the ozone, too greedy and stupid to see that in the proximate future, it is humanity itself we are annihilating, along with all of the planet's denizens.

A positive conclusion might be the following one:

we are a work-in-progress, and if we use our genius for the good of our peers, our four-legged friends, the oceans' inhabitants, and all the other living beings, including the flowers and plants that grace our world, then yes, we might, we just might create a better world.

Just look at our Israeli youth, our protectors, so strong and beautiful in body and soul, who know how fragile life is, for having lost a father, a friend, grandparents, a baby, victims of Islamic terrorists who are filled with hatred and wish to die as martyrs.

Yes, these young Israelis are to be thanked and admired for showing the world what Tikun Olam is all about, spreading the best they have in their hearts over our suffering planet.

Their joy and their smiles are addictive.

They are our torch of light.