Names Of Gods

Capitol Peregrine falcon claims his name: "Lincoln"

The Capitol's lone falcon fledgling is airborne now.

And he has a name. 

A committee at the Game and Parks Commission chose the name Lincoln from more than 260 "Name the Chick" entries from across Nebraska and 11 states submitted online and at the Capitol's falcon-watching kiosk, said Joel Jorgensen, nongame bird program manager with the commission.

Three people submitted the name Lincoln. One was Chris Davey of Overton. The other two were not identified because Jorgensen was not able to reach them to get permission to release their names.

"I'm just tickled to death," Davey said of her winning entry.

She submitted the name because it just seemed the perfect one for the surviving falcon hatched this spring. Of three eggs in the nest box, one did not hatch and another did not survive.

The surviving chick was hatched in Lincoln, and Lincoln is synonymous with Nebraska, Davey said. Boys are easy to name, she said, and Lincoln was the first name that came to her.

She also considered entering the name "Lempke," after Roger Lempke, retired adjutant general of the Nebraska National Guard. Davey's husband is retired after 25 years in the military.

She and the other two winners will get a year's subscription to NebraskaLand magazine and a plush replica of a peregrine falcon.  

Jorgensen said it was a little more of a challenge to pick a name for a lone falcon. When there are multiple birds, as there usually are, people suggest names that are part of a theme.

Last year, the three chicks were named Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, after the stars in the belt of the constellation Orion. The year before, four chicks were named Nemaha, Niobrara, Calamus and Platte after Nebraska rivers.

Chicks have been also named after famous Nebraskans and wind gods from Greek mythology.

The Names of God « There Are Real Things

Apologies for the long dearth of posts. I myself have been ambushed by that terrible state known as “having a job”, and am still trying to adjust to fitting my accustomed activities around 7.5 hours of moderately strenuous manual labour each day. Posts for wednesday and next saturday are being worked on.

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One thing I always found curious about the Old Testament is how God’s chief rivals bear names that apply just as well to God himself; which naturally leads to God showing a certain concern for brand differentiation to avoid confusion. Two names that crop up very frequently are Baal These deities – Baal and Moloch, anyway (El the canaanite dude doesn’t seem to be an issue in the Bible) – can be seen as a sort of distorted image of God. One is required to surrender all and be subject to the divinity, by the nature of the numinous; it is right and proper to love God more than all other things (quoth the Lord, “whoever does not hate father and mother for my sake…”); but a little twist of the conscience into “merciless and unforgiving” territory can pervert this understanding into an escalating demand for sacrifice – are you giving enough? Are you really prepared to do this much for your god? Well, prove it…

The savage, like ourselves, feels the oppression of his impotence before the powers of Nature; but having in himself nothing that he respects more than Power, he is willing to prostrate himself before his gods, without inquiring whether they are worthy of his worship. Pathetic and very terrible is the long history of cruelty and torture, of degradation and human sacrifice, endured in the hope of placating the jealous gods: surely, the trembling believer thinks, when what is most precious has been freely given, their lust for blood must be appeased, and more will not be required . The religion of Moloch — as such creeds may be generically called — is in essence the cringing submission of the slave, who dare not, even in his heart, allow the thought that his master deserves no adulation. Since the independence of ideals is not yet acknowledged, Power may be freely worshipped, and receive an unlimited respect, despite its wanton infliction of pain.