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Meaning of names:
for an immense list of the meaning of names, go to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Names
Read this book excerpt on the subjective meaning of the name Jack:
"Ah, but what’s in a name, you ask? Many things, I say.
My first name is Jack. A Jack is a common man- the antiquated, colloquial name for a servant, a man servant, servator mundi (the ‘body’ according to Jung), or man-jack, as it were, from which arises the oft-used expression ‘a Jack-of-all-trades’ (I am certainly not this, although by my early thirties I had done such varied jobs as: caddy, worm farmer, paperboy, prep-cook/dishwasher/delivery boy, hockey referee, farm worker, gas jockey, service in both the navy and army, waterbed installer, co-owner of two retail outlets, truck driver, warehouse labourer, road crew worker, security guard, co-op employee, mason’s assistant, fish-hatchery slave, kayak guide, biological assistant, internet writer, mushroom picker, and caretaker of numerous locations. I relate this list without braggary or arrogation, but only so as to conclude that I understand quite well the reasons why “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”); a Jack is the often ridiculous character in a nursery rhyme, who jumps over candlesticks and falls down and breaks his crown and so on; a Jack, in the biological world, is what is called a ‘promiscuous salmon’ who swims up the stream two years earlier than the rest of the species, and spawns over the awaiting egg beds while the mature bulls fight futily to the death for their now plundered breeding grounds; a Jack is a levered device to help lift heavy things from the earth; Jack is a prefix for such vernacular expletives as jackass, and jack-off; and Jack is the most powerful card in the game of Euchre, a game which, by some, would be considered as the cultural sport of the cultureless land of my upbringing.
My middle name is Ernest, and throughout my life I have indeed been earnest, perhaps to a fault, often forcing my way through a set of circumstances, which might have been better left alone or adroitly seduced, so to speak. But earnestness was a necessary trait to balance out the rest of my apathetic nature, thus allowing me to accomplish things which I had not really the energy to accomplish. Such earnestness could also account for my being an Aries, a ram, which, among other undiscovered aspects of this sign, tends to make me somewhat of a bull in a china shop in the world where spirit and matter mix and collide.
My last name is Haas. Haas, in Dutch, means rabbit. And though the root of rabbit, unknown to the greater part of mankind, is Rabbi, this does not prevent the cosmic joke from coming full circle and completing my name as Jack Rabbit.
Furthermore, on one of my Father’s trips to Holland- at a time when I was in Canada, writing about my experience of wonder and absolute non-understanding- he found himself often being laughed at when the receptionists at hotels would see his surname as he signed in, for at that time a country-wide advertising campaign had recently been set in motion, and it had a rabbit as the lead figure, and the rabbit spoke the words: “Mein naam ist Haas, ick weiss von nichts.” which translates, synchronistically, as “My name is Haas, I don’t know anything.”
On top of all this, my name is not even Jack Haas, for my birth name is actually John- a name which means “favored by the gods” (‘favored’, from my opinion, in the sense of a child choosing a particular teddy bear out of the pile, for no logical reason, and carrying and thrashing it about for a while, until one of the eyes is missing and a leg needs to be sewn back on; then the child chooses another)- and my parents had simply called me Jack from day one, or, actually they had called me Jackie to begin with- a fully androgynous alias which might be symbolic of my later, earnest need to marry my male and female halves within me.
And my surname, Haas, was actually my father’s stepfather’s last name, and so I have no actual blood tie to the Haas lineage.
Therefore it seems appropriate, given the all too real and all too unreal drama of my odyssey, that my name is Jack Haas, and my name is not Jack Haas."
from IN AND OF, by Jack Haas
Jack is the universal being.
Meaning of names
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