We hope that the fair Maid of Verona who made the impassioned appeal to her lover to change ‘a name that was ’nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man’ would forgive us for this our idolatrous attachment to it when we make bold to assert that, ‘Hindus we are and love to remain so!’ We too would, had we been in the position of that good Friar, have advised her youthful lover to yield to the pleasing pressure of the logic which so fondly urged ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose would smell as sweet by any other name!’ For, things do matter more than their names, especially when you have to choose one only of the two, or when the association between them is either new or simple. The very fact that a thing is indicated by a dozen names in a dozen human tongues disarms the suspicion that there is an invariable connection or natural connection or natural concomitance between sound and the meaning it conveys. Yet, as the association of the word with the thing is signifies grows stronger and lasts long, so does the channel which connects the two states of consciousness tend to allow an easy flow of thoughts from one to the other, till at last it seems almost impossible to separate them. And when in addition to this a number of sexondary thoughts or feelings that are generally roused by the thing get mystically entwined with the word that signifies it, the name seems to matter as much as the thing itself. Would the fair Apostle of the creed that so movingly questioned ‘What’s in a name?’ have liked it herself to nickname the God of her idolatry as ‘Paris’ instead of ‘Romeo’? Or would he have been ready to swear by the moon that ’tipped with silver all the fruit tree-tops,’ that it would serve as sweet and musical to his heart to call his ‘Juliet’ by ‘any other name’ such as for example - ‘Rosalind?’ Nay more; there are words which imply an idea in itself extremely complex or an ideal or a vast and abstract generalization and which seem to take, as it were, a being unto themselves or live and grow as an organism would do. Such names though they be ’nor hand, nor foot, nor any other part belonging to a man,’ are not all that, precisely because they are the very soul of man. They become the idea itself and live longer than generations of man do. Jesus died but Christ has survived the Roman Emperors and that Empire. Inscribe at the foot of one of those beautiful paintings of ‘Madonna’ the name of ‘Fatima’ and a Spaniard would keep gazing at it as curiously as at any other piece of art; but just restore the name of ‘Madonna’ instead, and behold his knees would lose their stiffness and bend his eyes their inquisitiveness and turn inwards in adoring recognition, and his whole being get suffused with a consciousness of the presence of Divine Motherhood and Love! What is in a name? Ah! call Ayodhya, Honolulu, or nickname her immortal Prince, a Pooh Bah, or ask the Americans to change Washington into a Chengizkhan, or persuade a Mohammedan to call himself a Jew, and you would soon find that the ‘open sesame’ was not the only word of its type.