I have been getting to know the Remnant movement a bit better. I found that Denver Snuffer felt as if he was to be called David (T&C 162)
This interested me in seeing something like this. There are so many scriptural precedents for changing a name to symbolize a new life. Michael/Adam, Jacob/Israel, Abram/Abraham, Sarai/Sarah, Saul/Paul, and even Jehovah/Jesus to name just a few. The change always coincided with a big change in the person’s life.
At first I couldn’t help but think of the temple. The new names you get in the temple are a ritualized and impersonal version of this phenomenon.
Then I thought about my own username. “Gileriodekel” is a word that I completely made up. I wanted a username that would guarantee I would never need to add extra characters onto because the one I wanted was already taken. I sat down and thought to myself “start off with a consonant. A ‘G’ sounds nice. Now a vowel. How about an ‘I'” and kept doing this until I arrived at “Gileriodekel”. This name has come to mean a lot to me, and is how I introduce myself in many instances.
Then, a much more real instance of this occured to me: transgender people regularly take on new names. They experience a big change in life (coming out, even to self) and take on a new name to symbolize that choice. We should regard this experience as holy. They have looked into themselves and the divine within them has given them a new name, just as what has been done scripturally.
Anyway, I thought that those were some cool parallels 🙂