If you've ever picked up a book about names, you probably flipped to the page containing yours to find out what it meant. I did this many years ago and learned that I was "a lady."

The next thing I did was to look up the meaning of my middle name, Elizabeth. "Consecrated to God," the book said. After looking up the word consecrated, I came to realize that if I really lived up to my name, I would be a nun. (Every child's dream!)

And that's not even considering my oddball last name, which few people can pronounce correctly, and fewer people--plus a town in England--share.

But here I am, all grown up. I did not become a nun, although I did dress as one once for Halloween.

So what's the point of names meaning anything, if you don't actually become what they mean? What's the point of having a name in the first place? For that matter, why do we have three names--and sometimes more?

The last two questions are pretty easy.

Your name sets you apart from other people. This is why we have last names, for example.

According to Leonard Ashley, author of What's in a Name?, the tradition of last names started with the Romans, who used family names to create more specific identities. (Jewish people have had their version of family names since ancient times, too. David ben Isaac means "David the son of Isaac.") The practice caught on in England during the Middle Ages, when people needed to set themselves apart from all the other Johns and Marys running around.

People carried this further during the 16th century in England, Ashley says, by taking middle names--a custom that caught on in the United States, as well.

What names mean is a harder question. Let's pick on my name some more.

The original meaning of the name Martha was "lady." But nowadays people think Martha is an overweight, old-fashioned blond. She also is strong, solid, loud, and, fortunately for me, likeable. I learned this from The Baby Name Survey Book, by Bruce Lansky and Barry Sinrod. These authors surveyed 100,000 people for their opinions about all sorts of first names.

Except for the overweight and blond parts (both of which can be fixed), I am everything people think Marthas should be. I'm even likeable ... or so my dog would have me believe. Did I become these things because my name is Martha? And would my life have been different if I had been given a different name?

I suppose I'll never know, unless I become one of the people who gets a new identity through the United States Marshals Service's Witness Security Program. But since I am not planning to get involved with the mob, my only other alternative is to change my name.

Let's say I'd rather people thought of me as "a rich, successful businesswoman, most likely a player on Wall Street ... drop-dead gorgeous and a city girl to the core." In that case, I would change my name to Madison, because that's what Lansky and Sinrod say people think about women with that name.

It's pretty clear that names have power--and lots of it. But did you know a name actually can hurt you? Maybe not like sticks and stones do, but still, names can bruise in other ways.

Studies done in the early 1900s showed that unusual names could produce maladjusted children and adults. A 1948 study, meanwhile, indicated that your name could make you more likely to get into--or flunk out of--Harvard University. Also, a 1974 study showed that rare names (a.k.a. unusual ones) were accompanied by guilt pangs, meekness, and low self-esteem. It all depends on your definition of unusual, and that certainly has changed since the 1970s.

Another scholar found in 1983 that an offbeat name could prevent you from graduating with honors from school--if you were a woman. Men didn't seem to have that problem, for some reason.

Another very interesting study had a group of elementary school teachers grade papers by students who were only identified by their first names. The students who got high marks were named Karen, Lisa, David, and Michael--all common and popular names. But Elmer, Adele, Bertha, and Hubert fared poorly.

So what if your name is Elmer? Does that mean you're stuck hunting wabbits?

Of course not. You can always go by your middle name. Or, you can dazzle people by citing Plato's 2,500-year-old dialogue Cratylus. (By the way, did you know that Plato's real name wasn't Plato? It was Aristocles. But he was called Plato, which means "The Broad," because of either his planet-like forehead or his stout shoulders.)

Cratylus asks a simple question: Shouldn't people have names that fit them?

The dialogue pits Cratylus against Hermogenes, whose name means "Son of Hermes." Cratylus wanted to know why Hermogenes, an unlucky, penniless guy, was named after Hermes, the god of good luck, wealth, and clever negotiations? Hermogenes didn't care that he wasn't living up to his name. Names are arbitrary, he argued.

So if you have a name that people question, you can just say you're with Hermogenes, not Cratylus, and then you can get on with your day. Meanwhile, your antagonists will be left scratching their heads wondering who Hermogenes and Cratylus are.

The final option, of course, is for you to make a name for yourself. This choice basically means to do something so great that the name Elmer is thereafter stuck in our collective consciousness as the name of a hero. Stuck firmly, as though with glue. Elmer's Glue, perhaps.

But that is another topic altogether, isn't it?