The Right to Have a Name

EVERY person has the right to have a name. In Tahiti, even an abandoned newborn whose father and mother are unknown is given a name. The registry office designates a first and a last name for the abandoned child.

Yet, there is one person who in a sense has been denied this basic right, a right granted to virtually all humans. Amazingly, he is “the Father, to whom every family in heaven and on earth owes its name”! (Ephesians 3:14, 15) You see, many people actually refuse to use the name of the Creator as it appears in the Bible. They prefer to replace it with such titles as “God,” “the Lord,” or “the Eternal One.” What, then, is his name? The psalmist answers that question: “You, whose name is Jehovah, you alone are the Most High over all the earth.”​—Psalm 83:18.

In the first half of the 19th century when the missionaries of the London Missionary Society arrived in Tahiti, Polynesian people worshipped several gods. Each had its own distinctive name, the principal gods being Oro and Taaroa. In distinguishing the God of the Bible from others, those missionaries did not hesitate to make wide use of the divine name, transliterated Iehova in Tahitian.

That name came to be well-known and commonly used in everyday conversation and correspondence. King Pomare II of Tahiti, who reigned in the early 19th century, used it frequently in his personal correspondence. Evidence of that fact appears in the letter reproduced here. Written in English, it is exhibited in the Museum of Tahiti and Its Islands. This letter testifies to the absence of prejudice regarding the use of the divine name at that time. What is more, God’s personal name appears thousands of times in the first Tahitian version of the Bible, which was completed in 1835.

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King Pomare II

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King and letter: Collection du Musée de Tahiti et de ses Îles, Punaauia, Tahiti