Maurer 1

Josh Maurer
Mrs. Rutan
AP Lit & Comp
30 August 2021

Do Names Define You?

Names. They are a very unique thing. When you just look on the surface, you just see a way to
identify people, but if you slowly take a deeper look, there is more than just a way to identify
people. When you take back a layer, you can see that a name is just not a way to identify people,
but it is part of our identity, it defines who we are in different ways.

In my case, my name is Joshua Robert Maurer. Each one of my names has more layers and
meanings than meets the eye.

When my parents named each of us kids, they wanted one of our names to be from the bible, for
example, my name from the bible is Joshua. They also wanted a family name. Mine is Robert
from my mom’s dad.

Most people, before they are born, have a name picked out, but that was not the case for me. My
dad picked my brother and sister up from school to drive them over to the hospital and the whole
way there, they argued about what gender and what name they wanted to name me. This arguing
continued even when I was born. My mom was set on the names Marshall or Calvin, but my
brother and sister bullied her into Joshua. Looking back on it, we all realize it would have been
funny if I was named Calvin, because of the comic Calvin and Hobbs, I was like Calvin, when I
was younger.

When you search up Joshua, you find that Joshua comes from a Hebrew name “Yehoshua,”
meaning “God is deliverance.” My parents picked this name partly because of the bible history it
has and they could tell that I would be like Joshua from the bible.

My middle name is special to me, because my grandpa passed away a few years ago from lung
cancer, and every time someone says my middle name or I think of it, I think of my grandpa and
all the memories I had with him and it brings me joy. When my grandpa passed away, I was
young. I remember the funeral but I wasn’t old enough yet to really understand it all. The one
thing I remembered is that the funeral home was packed and some people were outside. That’s
when I found out how much of a good man my grandpa was, helping out the community, being
on boards, and doing so much for the state of Michigan as well. So when I hear his name, it
makes me feel good that I got to be named after such an amazing man. A weird coincidence with
his name being Robert is he was robbed a couple of times when he worked. Here is some
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background information, my grandpa was a pharmacist and owned his own pharmacy in a rough
part of Lansing in the 1970s. So his name is Robert, and the start of his name is close to robber
has always been kind of odd.

Maurer. When you first hear it you would not expect it to be spelled that way. Trust me I have
thought the same thing. As you might think, Maurer is a German last name. Maurer is a German
surname that translates to “bricklayer” or “wall builder”. When I first saw this meaning it got me
thinking of my family. My family is not wall builders but they have a long history of doing stuff
with wood and building all sorts of things. My great uncle had a family shop where they would
build anything you could think of when it comes to wood. They ranged from cabinets to canoes.
My grandpa, on my dad’s side, used to do a lot of building with wood, especially bowl making.
So even though it’s not the exact same as being a wall builder, my family years after our name, is
still building and carrying on the family traditions and history.

Looking back on it, I am happy that I got the names that I got, and got to be born into such a
unique family with an amazing history about it. My name doesn’t define who I am, it is just a
way to identify me throughout my life, but I have noticed that it plays a big part in how people
see you and treat you. This happens even before they know you at all. Names are just a label, but
also, at the same time, the thing that defines you.