The Naming Ceremony — Identity as Sacred Responsibility
In Indigenous traditions, a name is not a label but a spiritual assignment — received through ceremony, earned through living, and changed when a person grows into a new identity through trial, vision, or achievement.
Among the Lakota, the Shunka Wakan Olowan (Horse Dance) is one of the ceremonies through which a person receives or changes their sacred name. Names may be given at birth by an elder who discerns the child's spiritual qualities; they may be earned through a vision quest; they may be bestowed upon a warrior after a brave act. Names describe the person's medicine — their gifts, their calling, their sacred nature. Crazy Horse (Tashunka Witko — 'His Horse is Crazy,' better translated as 'Untamed Spirit') was given a name that encoded the wild, visionary energy that made him a uniquely gifted leader. When a person changes deeply — through grief, healing, or initiation — they may receive a new name that reflects the new being they have become. The Anishinaabe honor-name ceremony gives a spiritual name that connects the person to the spirit world throughout their life.
Your name is your first prayer.
Psychologist Mary Watkins documents in Invisible Guests that naming practices in indigenous cultures function as identity assignments that connect the individual to a specific archetypal or spiritual pattern — a more intentional form of identity construction than modern random naming practices.
Anishinaabe oral tradition
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- What Native American traditions say about raising children
A name here is an assignment: given by an elder who discerns the child's qualities, earned in a vision quest, or bestowed after a brave act. Tashunka Witko, the name carried by Crazy Horse, is better rendered as Untamed Spirit than as the English it became. Names are changed when the person changes, which means identity is expected to move rather than settle.