In high school I took a class about "archetypal symbols" taught by an individual, Mary Lathoianas (whose name I will never spell correctly), who remains to be, even now though she is deceased, probably one of the most brilliant and dedicated teachers ever to pass through any high school, anywhere.

To put it mildly, I worshipped her. Unfortunately, I preferred math to English, and books bored me a lot more than did problem sets, where my academic passion lay. The interpretation of archetypal symbols, however, has a certain mathematical quality to it. And, I worshipped her.

Self indulgence aside, I wrote for that class a paper that was very meaningful to me at the time that I wrote it, and remains meaningful to me today. In that paper, I traced the history of naming, and I argued essentially that giving a name is an act of power, as humans have a tendency to take on the qualities of the name assigned to them.

(This theory, of course, I later learned, has been confirmed time and time again in the field of psychology, as well as in the more powerful corollary of the power of assigning titles and/or roles, a la Zimbardo Prison Experiment.)

Along those lines, I imagine that I should feel fortunate for being assigned the first name Rebecca, and even more blessed (or cursed) that my last name should mean Iron Mountain.

.. Which sometimes I feel like I am, or can be, or might appear (if a person is squinting). And which would look terribly piddly and trivial when viewed from the perspective of an airplane or a rocket ship or from a crater, on Mars.