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It was William Shakespeare who first posed the famed question, "what's in a name?" According to Shakespeare, "that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." However, with some consideration on the nature of names, my own included, I have come to question the validity of Shakespeare's statement; while eloquent and thought-provoking, it does not bear weight.

Names are nouns of illimitable power. They provide others with a way to identify us, while to some extent giving us our own identity. That is not to say that names are the primary source of one's identity, and that one's name is a concrete guideline for the nature of a human being that bears it; each individual of the same name varies, and for one to believe that one's name is the defining feature of a human being is simply foolish. However, names and the meanings associated with them can provide valuable insight into one's own nature if read in the context of what one already knows of oneself.

My name is Matthew Todd Dubois. I like to called by Matt, but I have a nickname that follows me around like a stray puppy; those who I become friends with, no matter where I live, end up calling me Duby, inspired without fail by my relatively uncommon last name. However, my first name makes up for any uniqueness of my last with its commonness. Matthew was the second most common name chosen for boys in 1985, the year I was born, superseded only by the slightly more popular Michael. Consequently, I can scarcely avoid running into at least one other Matt in any social setting I encounter. All through school, it was a rarity to find a single class in which there was no other Matt, out of all nine classes during a day. I quickly became used to this trend, and have all but ceased to notice it.

However, in spite of the commonplace nature of my name, I do not feel common in any sense. On the contrary, I feel, as all must feel to some extent, a fierce devotion to my self. I feel that I am uncommonly proficient in some certain and varied areas, such as the ability to run long distances at an unfaltering pace, contrived, no doubt, from all my time spent doing so in the setting of high school cross country, as well as my time spent running through the woods of my boyhood home, reveling in the simple and unsophisticated pleasures of youth.

This diversion to the memory of the woods from my childhood leads me to another aspect of my name: its meaning. My all too common first name bears a significant meaning,

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