Most of us like to think there’s something unique about us. And there is. Even those of us who say we don’t care about standing out — we still have that one thing. That thing that’s ours.
For me, my name is the first thing I don’t like people getting wrong. It sets the precedent.
Now before we go any further — it’s Samantha. Not Sam. And I can already hear some of you going — “Hang on, your name on here is Sammi Joe but you’re telling us your name is Samantha? Make your mind up!” Fair. I’ll come back to that. 😄
And yes, I know what you’re thinking. What’s the big deal? Sam, Samantha — same thing, right?
Wrong. And it gets worse. Because it’s somehow even more galling when it happens in a full name context — first name AND surname together. That’s supposed to be your proper, formal name. The grown up version. So to still reach for Sam at that point? Sam Jones instead of Samantha Jones? You had the right format and still got it wrong. That takes a special kind of commitment to laziness. Jones is my married name by the way — but the point stands whatever name I’m carrying.
And don’t even get me started on a register or a formal document. Your full proper name is right there in black and white and someone STILL shortens it? That one really gets me.
I should probably warn you at this point — I have two things that bypass all my usual politeness very quickly. Eating sounds. And being called Sam. I’m a fairly calm person generally, but catch me on either of those and all bets are off. If anyone puts Sam Jones on my grave, my spirit will not be at peace. Biblically incorrect as that may be.
But first, let me tell you about the time I went to the doctor.
He came out into the waiting room, looked at his list — my full name right there in front of him — and called out “Sam Rumble?” Rumble being my maiden name at the time.
I looked up at him and said, completely deadpan — “Oh, is that what it says on the name register?”
He went rather sheepish.
“Samantha Rumble?” he said. In a question tone. Like he wasn’t quite sure he was allowed.
“That’s better.”
You should have seen his face. I’m still not sure if it was fear or inner annoyance at the patient who had the audacity. But I’m a doctor’s daughter. I had the confidence. I used it. No regrets. 😄
It’s Only Two More Syllables
I mean, come on. AN-THA. That’s all I’m asking. Two extra syllables. We’re not learning Mandarin here. If you genuinely, truly cannot stretch to the full Samantha — then Sammi Joe works. Sammi with an I by the way, not a Y. I have my reasons. We all want to be a little unique, don’t we?
But not Sam. Never just Sam.
And honestly? I could call myself Sammi General and people would STILL find a way to call me Sam. I rest my case.
Sam Was Someone Else
Here’s the real reason.
Sam was the name I went by when I was a different person. Insecure. Making choices I’m not proud of. Living in a way that wasn’t aligned with who I was created to be. Sam wasn’t a bad person — but Sam was lost, and Sam was hurting, and Sam was doing what lost, hurting people do.
And then God showed up.
Slowly, steadily, everything changed. The insecurity, the bad decisions, the old patterns — God began to strip them away and replace them with something better. Something more solid. More me.
And the name I came back to was Samantha.
Samantha means God heard. And He did. He heard me in the mess, in the noise, in the bad decisions and the quiet desperation. He heard me, He answered, He called me into something new.
So when someone calls me Sam, it doesn’t just feel like a preference being ignored. It feels like being called back to someone I no longer am. Like being handed an old coat you donated years ago and being told to put it back on. Sam is part of my story — she always will be, and I don’t erase her — but she is not who I am today.
Samantha is feminine for me. Samantha is chosen. Samantha is heard by God.
That’s not a small difference.
And yes, I go by Sammi Joe here. I chose that deliberately. It sits comfortably between the two. Not Sam — never Sam — but not quite ready to put Samantha above the door either. Think of it as the in-between. The journey name. And yes, I see the irony. Also, it seems if it was Samantha, people would definitely more likely change it Sam. Sammi-Joe has less risk. Don’t tell me. You’re tempted to write back and call me Sam now aren’t you, just to spite me?
And since we’re being pedantic — my full name is actually Samantha Joanne Jones. I wasn’t expecting the doctor to reel all three off, that would just be odd. There are social norms after all. But Samantha. Just Samantha. That’s not too much to ask.
And if you’re wondering where Sammi Joe actually comes from — well. Samantha Joanne Jones. There it is. It was never random. It was always me, just in a different order.
Why Do I Keep Mentioning God?
You might be wondering why God keeps showing up in a post about what people call me. Fair question.
But for me the two are inseparable. He created me. He chose me. He changed me — with purpose. My name isn’t just a preference, it’s part of that story. And if you’ve landed here and had a look at my About Me page, you’ll already know that faith is woven into everything I write. So He was always going to show up.
And actually, names and identity are all over scripture. Which brings me to some people who might have felt exactly like I did in that waiting room.
You’re Not The First Person This Happened To
God has always taken names seriously. Some of the most significant moments in a person’s journey with God are marked by a name change.
Take Abram. Faithful, but waiting. Holding onto a promise he couldn’t yet see. And then God meets him and changes his name to Abraham — father of many nations — before he had even seen the fulfilment of what was promised. The name came before the reality. God called him into his future before it arrived.
Then there’s Jacob. Now Jacob is a fascinating one. His very name meant deceiver — and he lived up to it. He was a schemer, a manipulator, a man who got what he wanted through cunning rather than integrity. But then he had that extraordinary night of wrestling with God, and when morning came, he walked away with a limp and a new name. Israel. One who wrestles with God. Same man, completely different identity.
Can you imagine, after that, someone strolling up and calling him Jacob? Like nothing had happened? Like he was still the deceiver? I imagine it would have stung in a way that’s hard to articulate. Not just rude — but a denial of everything God had done in him.
(And if your name is Jacob — I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re lovely. Not all Jacobs are deceivers. Probably.) 😄
And then there’s Simon. Impulsive, emotional, the one who put his foot in his mouth almost as often as he said something profound. Jesus looked at him and called him Peter — the rock— even before Simon had become anything like a rock. It was a prophetic name. A calling. Jesus wasn’t describing who Simon was — He was declaring who Simon would become. And not just any rock — the foundation on which the entire church would be built. Imagine being given that name. Imagine carrying that calling. Every time someone called him Peter, they were speaking his destiny over him whether they knew it or not.
Names, in God’s economy, are not throwaway labels. They carry identity. They carry destiny. They carry testimony.
It Works Both Ways
I want to tell you about my husband Gareth.
Gareth means God’s gentle man. And I’m not being biased when I say he absolutely lives up to it — plenty of other people have said the same. He’s six foot tall, and yet there is this quality about him. A gentleness. A kindness. An approachability that just oozes out of him. You feel at ease around him immediately.
Now, he might argue that his behaviour didn’t always match that. That before God changed him, he wasn’t always living up to the name he was carrying. But here’s what I’d say — you could always see it in him. It was always there. In his eyes, in his presence, in the way people were drawn to him even then. The gentleness was written into him. God just brought the behaviour into line with what was already there.
And that’s the thing — God works both ways.
For me, Samantha was always my name. It was always there. But I spent years behaving like Sam — the lost, insecure version — until God called me back to who I was always meant to be. I had to grow back into my name.
For Gareth, the name always fitted. But he had to grow into it. To become in behaviour what he already was in identity.
Same God. Same intentionality. Different directions. He just has this way of making the person match the name, or the name match the person, whichever way around it needs to go.
And then there’s Zebedee. My dog. Named after the father of James and John in scripture — a perfectly respectable biblical name. Except he has absolutely no interest in living up to it. He is, without question, the Zebedee from the Magic Roundabout. All bounce, no dignity whatsoever. He also seems to prefer Zeb. I can’t even win with the dog. 😂🙈
And Then There Are The Karens
Can we just take a moment for the Karens?
I genuinely feel sorry for every woman named Karen who went to bed one night with a perfectly lovely name and woke up to find it had become internet slang for someone demanding, entitled, and permanently ready to speak to the manager.
Here’s the thing though. Karen, in its biblical roots, carries a meaning that couldn’t be further from that cultural caricature. It speaks of strength, power, and purification. Now I’ll grant you — if you squint hard enough, power might go some way to explaining the manager situation. 😄 But strength and purification? That’s not someone demanding a refund. That’s someone with real weight and dignity behind their name.
So if your name is Karen — or if you carry any name that the world has decided to redefine, mock, or dismiss — can I just say this: the world does not get the final word on what your name means. Culture is loud, the internet is louder, but neither of them are the authority on your identity.
Which, actually, is the whole point of this post.
Names Mean Something
Whether it’s God renaming someone in scripture, a woman choosing what she wants to be called, or the internet hijacking a perfectly good name — there is always meaning attached. Always identity attached.
And if you still think names are just labels, consider this — why do people spend years, sometimes a lifetime, tracing their family tree? Why does someone who was adopted feel that deep pull to find out their original surname, their heritage, where they came from? It’s not just curiosity. It’s because something in us knows that a name carries more than letters. It carries belonging. History. Identity. God wired that into us whether we realise it or not.
You see it all through scripture too. Matthew opens his gospel with a genealogy — a long list of names tracing the family line of Jesus all the way back through the tribes of Israel to Abraham. Luke takes it even further, all the way back to Adam. And I’ll be honest with you — the first time I read it, I thought, seriously, God? Every single name? It felt like the most skippable passage in the Bible.
But then something stopped me. It was almost as if I felt Him say — would you like me to forget your name? Would you like your story left out? Because that’s what those lists are. They’re not filler. They’re not boring admin. Every name in that genealogy is a real person, a real story, part of the unfolding of His Story. Every single one mattered enough to be recorded. And if He kept track of every name in a bloodline stretching back thousands of years, do you really think yours doesn’t matter to Him?
And then there’s the woman in the gospels with the issue of blood. She’s never named. Not once. The crowd didn’t notice her, and scripture doesn’t record her name. But Jesus stopped. In the middle of a crowd, He stopped for her. He saw her. He knew her. Her name might not be written in the text — but it was known by Him. And that’s the point. You don’t have to be famous, or recorded, or remembered by the world. If He knows your name, that’s enough.
Your name can hold your history. It can hold your testimony. It can hold the distance you have travelled from who you once were. And if someone has told you their full, chosen, preferred name, the most respectful thing you can do is use it. Not because they’re being oversensitive. But because identity matters. And the journey a person has taken to arrive at who they are today deserves to be honoured — not casually abbreviated.
A Question For You
Do you know what your name means? Where it comes from? Not every name has a direct biblical reference — and that’s fine — but most names have a root, an origin, a story behind them somewhere. It might surprise you. And even if the meaning feels like it has nothing to do with who you are, maybe that’s its own interesting question worth sitting with.
And whether the meaning resonates or not, here is the bigger question:
Has God ever spoken a new identity over you? A new way of seeing yourself that replaced the old story you used to carry? A sense that who you were is not the final version of who you are?
Because that is what He does. He did it for Abram. He did it for Jacob. He did it for Simon and He did it for me.
If He’s done it for you too — I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Your name is not just a label. It’s a story. Make sure you’re living from the right chapter.
