Names

[elected.rejected]

I was just curious about what a name could symbolize or mean in a persons dream. I don't mean names of people you know, or celebrities. Say, however, that you dreamed of a person who you've never seen before or dreamed of having a baby and giving that baby a particular name... are there ways of being able to determine what that name means?

[mythopoet]

Hi-This is really a very fun question!

No doubt I am re-wondering tonight just like you are, and as I often have, about words in dreams. A good many of my own dreams are what Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls 'disembodied voice dreams'. That means a voice from out of the blue says something to me, a word or a sentence, and that is the whole of the dream. My 'sparrow' dream is a dream like this. I have the essay tending this word-dream on line at mythopoetry.com. If you go to read it, click on the Search This Site link and type the word 'sparrow' into the search bar that appears next. A list of poems and essays will show up. Click on the second link which should be the one for the essay I am thinking about right now.

My felt-sense for the soul of a word is that it is expressive like music or like lyric poetry or like laughter and even retains this in its 'depth-sense' where it is used to represent meaning something. Maybe especially when it used to represent an idea is it that a word will pretend to mean something and still actively imagine (albeit unconsciously) this depth-sense the most. The word wears a mask like the personality wears a persona. Something like that is what I am sensing about words. Every word has a soul of its own beyond how it is used in a sentence to mean. The soul of the word is its poetic life. It is when words are merely allegorically translated and this unknown quality of soul is ignored, unacknowledged and/or rejected the wonder life is taken and the word is dead.

In the realm of dream the word belongs to the dream-soul. In this realm subject and object are one; the eye and the "I" (subjective ego) are not separate from each other. They are identical. This is the realm where two or more objects can frequent the same place and take up the same space at the same time. The images of dream are both polysynthetic and polysemantic. Joseph Campbell suggested both these aspects are inexhaustible when analyzed by waking consciousness. The meaning of dream images are beyond the reach of the eye. They are self-luminous expressions. The images of dream are psychic i.e. made in the image and likeness expressing the psyche of the dream body. My guess is a word is as foundationally related to the ground of dreaming as the appearance of and re cognition of the image you have of yourself in the dream will have been.

Blessings,
mythopoet

[unclesirbobbyrobson]

yes names are symbolic. They may be especially so if the name is a synonym. For instance if you have a name which can be a synonym... eg John Butcher or Mrs Goodheart. Those names may refer to the types of emotions ntheir names inspire.

but people may siply appear as examples of the type of behavior they exhibit. For instance a geek computer guy you know may appear in your dream at a time when you realise that you need to buckle down and learn some computer package. So its about your need to become more of a geek like the person in that dream.
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Dreams can use one set of emotions from the past to show how we are feeling something very similar right now. That’s where many dreams can be misinterpreted. Many psychologists point to deep and traumatic events that we are bringing up within our dreams. Yet they are mistaken. The dream is not about that incident. The dream is comparing that traumatic incident to some current situation with something that has just happened. Yet because the dream seems to be about the event in the past we assume that’s what the dream is about. But in reality dreams will be often simply saying "yesterday was as bad as what happened last year". Many times we seem very upset and things seem chaotic but after a good nights sleep the previous day’s events will be put in perspective. It may have seemed a nightmare when we couldn't get the printer to work or when everything seemed to go wrong for you on a particular day. Dreams depict events in our head. Our mind often exaggerates situations and feelings. So many times these crises within our mind get quickly forgotten. But dreams will deal with these here to day and gone tomorrow emotions.

These pages are especially helpful in showing you how to interpret dreams

Dream symbolism and dream dictionary interpretation - How to interpret dreams Interpreting dreams
Dream symbolism - How to use dream symbols Triggers for dreams
A dream dictionary that explores the variety of meanings in a dream symbol Dream dictionary