How I Got My Name

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Twenty minutes later I knew that, even though I had walked into that house as David, I would walk out as Akhneton. And I did.
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Over the years, I have been presented with many challenges to my sense of who I thought I was, many assaults on my self-image and self-identity. The story of my name change is but one...
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I had been in Sedona just about three months when, Diana, a friend I had met shortly after my arrival, began to talk to me about spiritual names. She called them vibrational names (some call them "soul names") and she believed passionately that if you had one, you had a responsibility to use it out in the world.

"It's who you really are," she would say, "and if it's who you really are, that's who you should be every day to everybody."

She was convincing, even more so when she announced the new name she had taken on: Irlianna.

Irlianna....it had a nice ring to it...a powerful ring to it. And, strangely enough, it seemed to fit her. It fit her so much that, within a few days, I could barely remember what her name had been before.

Yet as compelling as Diana-Irlianna's arguments were, the issue was theoretical. I was David in those days (my middle birth name) and knew no other name to go by.

A little prehistory... Seven months earlier, I had signed up for my Second Degree Reiki training in Toronto. At the start of the class, I introduced myself with my full birth name. One of my classmates, however, immediately began calling me David and by the end of the class, a powerful inner knowing insisted that I follow suit.

So it was to David that Irlianna made her impassioned arguments, a David who already had some measure of name-changing experience under his belt.

One evening, within days of these conversations with Irlianna, I felt moved to call a friend in Toronto. I did not know Karyna well; we had met only once, at a party shortly before I left the city. But that December evening, I was homesick for Toronto and she was the one I called.

Let me tell you something about Karyna. Apart from being a warm, generous and loving person, she is a clear channel for some powerful energies. After we had chatted for a few moments about nothing in particular, she said, "I'm getting a message for you. Do you want to hear it?"

"Sure," I said.

A few moments later, she was "in the zone" and the group she was channeling was asking, "Do you know your vibrational name?"

Let me be clear about one thing. I had never mentioned names, Irlianna or anything related to either in my conversation with Karyna. Clearly, though, name energy was in the air!

"No," I replied, somewhat amazed.

"Would you like to?"

"Okay..."

"Would you like it to come through Karyna or directly to you?"

"Through me, please." I didn't have to think about that one. It felt far more empowering to receive directly whatever information was coming through.

I sat in expectant silence for a few moments. I'm not certain how to describe what happened next. It's as though I knew the name that was coming without actually hearing, seeing or sensing it. I knew what was coming. I didn't want it to come.

Because I wouldn't allow myself to hear the whole name, it began to trickle into my consciousness one letter at a time...

A...
K...
H...
N...
E...

"Okay," I shouted inside. "I surrender!"

The name was Akhneton, and my resistance was related to my apparent audacity in taking on the name of an Egyptian Pharaoh, particularly one about whom I knew nothing.

Having surrendered to my name, I was still not willing to surrender to Irlianna's call to take it out into the world.

"I'll take it on as my spiritual name," I said to myself, "but just for myself."

When I got off the phone a few minutes later, I immediately logged on to the Internet to find out more about this Pharaoh.

I learned that Akhneton was the revolutionary monotheist who took on a powerful priestly class and decreed that the many gods of their Amenist tradition were now a single god, Aten, the sun god. Most Egyptologists believe Akhneton to have been Nefertiti's husband and Tutankhamen's father. And most Egyptologists both spell and pronounce his name differently from what I sensed and heard.

Akhneton, it turned out, was the least conventional of the conventional spellings of a name that's generally pronounced Ahk-NA-ten — not, as I do, AHK-na-tawn. (Aq'naton came later, a spelling I could not have accepted at the time.)

None of this information about my namesake, however reassuring, convinced me to follow Irlianna's counsel. "I'm still not taking this out in the world," I insisted.

So David I remained...

Two weeks passed. New Year's Day 1998 found me at potluck, eager to meet a Canadian family that had just moved to Sedona. I had felt guided to remain in Sedona even though my six- month stint as a Canadian visitor was about to expire. Perhaps, I thought, this family can tell me how I can legally stay!

One of the first things I noticed about Calen was his unusual name. Once I learned that this was a name he had chosen for himself, I began firing questions at him — how had he chosen it, had he changed it legally, what did his family think, how did he feel giving up his birth name...

Twenty minutes later we were done and I knew that, even though I had walked into that house as David, I would walk out as Akhneton.

It was not an easy transition. Many fears arose in the weeks that followed as I began to wear my new name out into the world, mostly fears of being judged.

Nearly everyone, though, responded to me as I had responded to Irlianna: within days, most had forgotten I had ever been anyone other than Akhneton.

Two postscripts:

Postscript #1
When my then-wife and I connected, I was already Akhneton. When we went to get our marriage license and the clerk wrote out my legal (birth) name, my wife-to-be blanched. After shifting her gaze from the license to me to the clerk and back to the license, she pointed her finger at the offending line.

"Can you add something to that?" she asked. "Like a nickname?"

"You mean like Bubba?" the clerk asked in all solemnity.

"No," we replied in unison.

Once again, she looked from the name on the form to me and back again.

"That's not who I'm marrying," she announced with grim finality.

I swallowed hard and turned to the clerk.

"If I were to legally change my name," I asked haltingly, "what would I have to do?"

The clerk explained the procedure, which in pre-9/11 Arizona was so liberal even a nonresident Canadian could do it.

I could do it, but would I? It was a big step, one I had never considered. Calen, for example, had never changed his name legally.

"I need to think about this," I pleaded.

"Here's what I can do," the clerk offered. "I can make this out in your birth name. If you decide to change it, come back with your papers and I'll issue you a new one at no charge."

Two days later, I was back at the same counter, this time with completed, notarized name-change forms. Two weeks later, I was legal. Three weeks after that, we were married.

Here's the thing: Even though we got married a mere seven weeks after that magical connection date of May 1, 1998, there was no logical reason to apply for our marriage license as early as we did. Yet a powerful inner voice, the voice of the God That I Am, suggested we apply for it immediately.

Surrendering to that voice made it possible for the name change to take effect in time for our June 21 wedding.

Postscript #2

A few months after the legal name change and wedding, I woke up one morning knowing the spelling I now use. This time I did not hesitate to make the change.

Shortly after that, "Ben-Isha" bubbled up into my consciousness as a part of my name. It was not until a few weeks later that I learned that to the Ascension-based group known as the Ishayas, Isha was a name for Jesus.

Two years later, on Maui, I changed my name legally once again — incorporating both the new spelling and the add-on to create the name I now use in my writing and for all my spiritual work.