Nāmasiddhi Jātaka

Jataka No. 97 of the Pali Canon (a traditional birth-story of the Buddha's past lives) was told by the Buddha concerning a monk named Papaka, who had grown unhappy with a monastic name that meant Vile and wished to be given a better one. To show him that a name had never once determined the worth of the one who carried it, the Buddha recalled an old story of a student who had once shared that very name and that very discontent.

In that former life, the Bodhisatta had become the renowned teacher of the academy at Takkasila, drawing students from royal courts and merchant families across the land to study beneath him. Among his pupils was a bright and hardworking youth whose own parents, following simple village custom, had named him Papaka, meaning Vile.

Papaka's fellow students seized on his unfortunate name at every opportunity, calling out to him as Wicked or Evil whenever he passed through the halls. The young man grew convinced over time that this single inherited word was the true obstacle standing between himself and any future happiness or dignity he might otherwise have earned.

Papaka approached the Bodhisatta and begged leave to travel until he found a nobler name, one his teacher might then formally bestow on him in place of the one he had carried since birth. The Bodhisatta agreed without argument, telling him only to wander freely, observe the ways of ordinary people, and choose whatever name pleased him along the way.

On his journey, Papaka came upon a funeral procession in a frontier town and learned that the deceased had been named Jivaka, meaning the Living One. When he asked in astonishment how a man named Living could have died at all, a mourner answered him plainly. Death comes for Jivaka and for anyone else alike, since a name is nothing more than a convenient label and holds no power to stay death's hand.

Walking on into the merchant quarter, Papaka watched a wealthy man strike a servant girl who had failed to repay a small debt, and learned that her name was Dhanapali, meaning Guardian of Wealth. Marveling that so rich a name could belong to someone beaten over so little money, he was told curtly that a name buys no grain, and that virtue and honest labor produce wealth where mere sound never could.

Deeper in the forest, Papaka met a traveler weeping in confusion and learned that this lost man's name was Panthaka, meaning the Pathfinder. Even a man named for his skill at finding roads, Papaka realized with sudden clarity, could still lose his own way as easily as anyone else.

Papaka turned back toward Takkasila without needing to search any further, and bowing before the Bodhisatta, confessed everything he had seen: a Living man dead, a Guardian of Wealth reduced to servitude, and a Pathfinder bewildered in the thicket. He had come to understand that a name was merely a convention of everyday speech, and that character and conduct alone determined what any person was actually worth.

At the story's end, the Buddha identified the discontented monk before him with the very student in the old story. The two Papakas were one and the same lesson told twice: a name given at birth decides nothing about the life that follows it. The monk's own unhappiness with his name deserved exactly the same answer the Bodhisatta had once given a student who had traveled the length of the land only to discover a truth he could just as easily have learned by staying home.

Jivaka, Dhanapali, and Panthaka never knew that a student had once measured his own worth against the fortunes carried by their names. Yet each of them, simply by living out an ordinary life untouched by what their parents had once called them, taught Papaka more thoroughly than any renaming ceremony ever could have. A name remained, after his journey, exactly what it had always been: a convenience for calling someone to dinner, and nothing more substantial than that.