You may have been named by your parents at birth. You may have been adopted as a baby and renamed. You may have decided at some point in life that you wanted to change your name. No matter what, you have a name.
There is the "why did my parents pick this name" aspect and then there is the "what does my name mean" aspect. As a kid I remember being interested in the meaning of my name. We had some book that listed names and their meanings. And there it was... Brian = "strong one". Yes! Score! My name conveys power and superiority. I am truly fortunate to have this name.
Fast forward to my (much) older and (somewhat) wiser self. It was during one of my dedicated introspection sessions that I had a revelation. In this case the "dedicated introspection session" was when I was washing my car. I started thinking about names and their meanings. The much delayed light bulb that went off in my head was that almost without exception all the names were associated with something positive.
What does your name mean? King, Queen, Princess, Holy One, Majestic, Strong, Angelic, Conquereor... even Strong One, just to name a few. Anyone detect a pattern here? Of course, it's so obvious - the "meaning" of each name is at best associated with someone in history (factual or fictitious) with whom you can make a positive association.
You're not getting the whole story - not by any means. What if you were told that statistically your name which means "strong one" was associated with 0.001% of the people who ever carried that name? Make you feel better? Of course not.
And that's the point. These name meaning reference guides will refer to the best name association available for that name. They won't mention that there was only ever one person in the history of the world who lived up to the "meaning" of that name. For every high performing namesake, there are scores, hundreds, thousands, and more of people with the same name who dream of mediocrity but don't even reach that stage.
So now that it's out in the open let's be real here. You try to pull a good meaning from your name but often there was no thought beyond it being the name of a relative to whom a loan payment is owed or a name that "just sounds good and doesn't rhyme with any curse words".
No one enters the name game thinking they want a name that means "weak underperformer", "slovenly poop scraper", or "oafish crossdresser". But reality is that there are probably many, many more of those types of people with that name than there are kings, queens, princesses, strong ones, etc.
Then again, if the kid has an innate research drive, they'll quickly find that while the name was inspired by a noble and esteemed colleague or friend, the reality is that the name was chosen somewhat arbitrarily.
No parent is going to say "I've named you after an oafish crossdresser". Parents are funny that way.
