Le sens des noms?
(Not the author.)
Quel est ton nom?
What is your name?
It’s one of the first questions we learn in another language. It’s simple, direct, and foundational. Names are our first identifier, our calling card in the world. They signify our individuality, the thing that separates us from the crowd. Or at least, they used to.
Not long ago, I had an interaction—or rather, a dissolution of one—with an old high school acquaintance. And by acquaintance, I mean someone whose sole connection to me was our shared past and a digital connection marked by nothing more than a mutual 'Add Friend' click.
We weren’t close in high school. I can recall maybe one conversation in the entire forty years I knew his name and face. But in the golden age of Oh wow, Facebook is amazing! Let’s reconnect with everyone! we all added people from the past without much thought. It was a digital yearbook—a class reunion without the bad lighting, awkward hugs, attempts to hide love handles and male pattern baldness with a lukewarm buffet and cheap drinks.
But what is friendship in the social media era? What is connection when all we share is a name in a list?
This particular connection came to an abrupt end when my old classmate failed what I’ve come to think of as the Facebook Rorschach test. I posted a meme—something that, if you know me or have read my posts, aligned with my general beliefs. He saw it, and without confirmation immediately interpreted it as an attack on his beliefs, and rather than engaging in any kind of discourse, he took the scorched-earth approach—hurling snark, making assumptions and deciding that, because we had different worldviews, I was his enemy.
So, I did what we do in the digital age: I unfriended him. One click, and the connection was gone.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? These days, our names don’t seem to matter as much as our tribes. We don’t engage as individuals anymore; we engage as representatives of political ideologies, religious affiliations and social movements. We see a name, and rather than recalling a shared past or a personal connection, we assess them based on which camp we think they belong to. It’s a depressing evolution.
Once upon a time, America was a nation of individuals who became a collective. E Pluribus Unum—Out of Many, One. We were never perfect at it, but at least we pretended to try. Now, we’ve flipped it: we are one country, yes, but fractured into increasingly rigid factions. Your name alone isn’t enough to secure goodwill. Your tribe dictates your value.
And that is deeply troubling.
Lincoln warned us that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Yet here we are, a nation of “unfriended” people, digitally (and sometimes literally) walking away from one another. It’s easier that way, of course. Tribalism is comfortable. It simplifies things. It tells us who is good and who is bad. It keeps our worldview intact.
But at what cost?
Maybe—just maybe—it’s time to step back and remember that behind every screen, every social media account, and yes, every political belief, there is a name. A person. An individual with a history, a story and a life that extends beyond whatever ideological battlefield we’ve decided to fight on that day.
That doesn’t mean we abandon our beliefs or silence our convictions. Now more than ever, we must make our voices heard. But maybe it does mean we do our best to stop treating every single difference as a war to be won.
What’s in a name? Everything. Maybe it’s time we remember that before we belonged to tribes, we belonged to ourselves. We had names.
Perhaps it’s time we reintroduce ourselves—before we forget how.