Here is what I know. My first name is Mary, but since I was born, I have gone by Faith. It was a compromise between my parents: My dad wanted to name me after his mom, Mary, but my mom wanted to name me something more unique, so they agreed that Mary would be my first name, but I would go by my middle name, which would be Faith. I have long fantasized about legally dropping the “Mary.” I haven't seen my namesake since I was six. I’m not sure how far the name “Mary” goes back. I was almost named “Grace,” which would’ve saved me a lot of time with this paragraph.
Here is what I found out. First, I went to babynamewizard.com because it had the word “wizard” in it. Their definition of “Faith” was a strictly religious one and did not consider other more secular definitions. I prefer Google’s open-to-interpretation one: “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” The second definition listed is a “strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof,” a definition I can appreciate for the aptly-chosen last leg of the sentence: “rather than proof.” Touche, Google. One interesting thing that I learned from the wizard website was that apparently the name Faith was very popular amongst 17th-century Puritans. OK.
Famous people with whom I share my name: Faith Hill, Faith Evans, Faith Ford, Faith Bacon (yeah, I know), just plain old “Faith” (which was definitely accompanied by a picture of Selena Gomez), Faith Kelly and Mia Faith, who you may know from the highly-acclaimed motion picture “Brociopath.” To name a few.
You know what name is super hard for little kids to say? You guessed it. Faith. I worked with little kids as an on-call substitute classroom para in between shifts at the coffee shop a couple years back and got called an incredible range of names. Among them were Ms. Face, Ms. Fath, Ms. Feth, Ms. Fate, and one I am especially partial to, Ms. Fake. One time, a kindergartner in my reading group couldn’t remember my name. The strategy he decided to call upon was the one where you make as many completely random dissimilar guesses as you can until you eventually stumble on the right name: “Uuuuuhhhhh… Ms. Ling? Ms. Vue? Ms. B? Ehhh…Ms. Ka?” Nope.
I was once asked at a job interview if “Faith” was a religious nickname. Super nope.
I’ve been making jokes about eliminating other Faiths since I was a kid, my mom’s voice echoing through my head: “...Faith...unique…not very many people with that name...” My research on famous Faiths seemed to corroborate what my mom said -- I wasn’t able to find very many of us. I like the idea of taking my mom’s praise of my name as “unique” the totally wrong way and thinking that she means other Faiths can’t or shouldn’t exist, which makes me think of the time my manager of 7 years received an application from someone by the name “Faith.” He recycled the application.
There can only be one.
