Field Note No. 4: Getting the name right is respect.

What’s in a Name?   Turns out, everything.

My creative wife asked if I’d cut several straight logs, each about sixteen inches long. I’d just cleared a fence line, and there were twenty or thirty logs—ten feet each, four to eight inches across—stacked in the shade. Perfect. She planned to stand them upright, cap them, and turn them into an artistic raised-bed planter.

The easiest way to get uniform cuts was to build a stand—one of those folding X-shaped rigs. I could picture it perfectly but couldn’t recall what it was called. Was it a sawbuck or a bucksaw? I knew the tool. I just couldn’t get the name right. A quick search set me straight.

That tiny lapse got me thinking about names in general.

I remembered a friend from high school, Bill Williams—his parents named him William (Bill) Williams. We called him Bill Bill. Then there were others with two first names, like David Thomas. One of my grade-school teachers spent half the year calling him Thomas before realizing her mistake. Poor kid.

And then there were names so long or complex that life itself seemed to conspire against them—kids cramming their identity into the tiny boxes of a standardized-test form. You probably know someone (maybe you are someone) whose name invites confusion before connection.

I’ve also lived on the receiving end of that. Given my last name, I’m often called John—as in the signature on the Declaration of Independence. When that happens, I usually respond with humor, giving the speaker an “A for effort and an F for execution.” John tastes like a Sour Patch Kids; Tom is more of a Werther’s Original. Close, but not quite the same sweetness.

As a young professional, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People made a big impact on me. I still have my “Dale Carnegie Scrapbook,” signed by everyone in the training. Carnegie taught: “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

Fast-forward to today: neuroscience backs him up. Hearing your own name lights up the brain’s self-reference centers. Even a single familiar letter can catch your attention. And when someone mispronounces or dismisses your name? It stings more than we let on.

So much good comes from something so simple—rapport, confidence, belonging, connection.

It turns out, sawbuck and bucksaw belong together but aren’t interchangeable—just like names and the people who carry them. A useful reminder from a simple tool: getting the name right matters.

Kids can be cruel with names; adults can be careless. Both forget that a name, like a well-fitted tool, deserves respect.