Nicknames that Stick
January 18, 2026 • Epiphany 2 • Year A
Isaiah 49:1-7 • 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 • John 1:29-42
For better or for worse, I’ve never had a nickname that stuck. My last name is “Walsh,” and some friends in high school used to call me “Walsh woman.” My first and middle names are “Lora Jean,” and my parents used to call me “Lora Jeannie Chili Beanie.” No one else can call me that.
I don’t have a great nickname story, but I’ve found some people who do. One guy lost his shoe during a school prank, so his friends call him “Cindy”—short for Cinderella. Someone wore a yellow shirt on the first day of school and got the nickname “Cab”—as in “Taxi Cab.” Someone named “Miles” got nicknamed “Kilometers,” which his friends then shortened to “Kilos.”
In today’s gospel, we hear one version of how Simon got the nickname Peter, which means “Rock” or “Stone.” Simon’s brother Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist. When Andrew started following Jesus, Andrew told his brother Simon he’d found the Messiah. When Andrew brought Simon to Jesus, Jesus took a good long look at him. Jesus first called him by his family name, “Simon son of John,” but said, “You are to be called Cephas”—the Aramaic word for Rock. The Greek equivalent is “Peter.”
Why the nickname “Rock”? Maybe Simon was looking at Jesus all dumbstruck and stone-faced. Maybe Peter, face-to-face with the possible Messiah, looked “petrified”—in the concrete sense of “turned to stone.” Jesus could have thought, “I’m gonna to call this guy Stone from now on.”
There are big differences between the gospels of John and Matthew about how Simon meets Jesus and how he comes by the nickname “Peter” (cf. Matt 4:18-20). My personal fan theory is that the other disciples start calling him by the nickname “Rock” after the walking-on-water incident. When the disciples saw Jesus walking on water, Peter tried to walk toward Jesus himself. But as soon as Peter stepped out of the boat onto the surface of the lake, he started to sink. Jesus caught Peter by the hand to save him and called him, “You of little faith.” I can just imagine all the guys ribbing their friend Simon for sinking, and calling him “Rock” (Matt 14:22-33).
The more official reason Simon gets the name “Rock” comes later on. When the disciples tell Jesus that some people think he’s John the Baptist come back from the dead, and that other people think he’s the prophet Elijah revisited, Peter proclaims that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Then, Jesus tells Peter that he is the “rock” on which Jesus will build his church (Matt 16:13-17).
We’ll never know for sure why exactly Simon got the nickname “Peter” and who used it when. But Peter’s faith in Jesus as Messiah was a foundation strong enough for Jesus to build on.
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The First Nations Bible translates the name “Peter” as “Stands on Rock.” The First Nations translation presents the Bible in the language and style of indigenous North American storytelling. In this translation, Jesus says to Peter, “. . . I have given you the name Stands on Rock, and upon this great rock I will make my sacred family stand strong. And the powers of the Dark Underworld of Death will not stand against them” (Matt 16).
For other character names besides Peter, the First Nations Bible also uses the meanings of those names, rather than the proper names more familiar to us. Abraham’s name is “Father of Many Nations.” Isaac’s name is “He Made Us Laugh.” Jacob’s name is “Heel Grabber.” Jacob’s new name, Israel, is “Wrestles with Creator.” Moses’s name is “Drawn from the Water.” The prophet Isaiah is called, “Creator Will Help Us.” Jesus’s name is “Creator Sets Free.”
To me, these names sound more like the sort of name described by the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading: the names God gives to us and calls us by.
Many of these names in the First Nations Bible are true to the etymological roots of these names from Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. This helps us hear these names like the Bible’s earliest audiences would have.
Other translations in the First Nations Bible also help me hear familiar things in a new way—or maybe in what’s actually an older way. John the Baptist’s name is “Gift of Good Will.” His message to the world is this: “Creator’s good road from above is close.” John’s message of repentance is translated as, “return to the good road.” Sins are called “broken ways.”
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Sometimes, the First Nations translation takes liberties. When telling the story of Jesus’s baptism, told in last week’s gospel reading and retold in today’s, the First Nations translation says, “A voice from the sky spoke like distant thunder, ‘This is my much-loved Son, who makes my heart glad!’” This description of a voice like distant thunder helps me hear the voice from heaven not as an aggressive assertion, but as a stirring invitation.
The First Nations translations of some of the most quotable Scripture passages also illuminate this invitation more fully. For the famous John 3:16, it has, “The Great Spirit loves all creation so deeply that he gave his Son . . . Creator did not send his Son to condemn this world he created but to bring all creation back into harmony and balance” (John 3:16-17).
For the Apostle Paul, love was the gift the Christians at Corinth needed most—surpassing the gifts of speech and knowledge that he praises them for in today’s second reading. The First Nations translation of Paul’s hymn to love later in First Corinthians reads, “Love is patient and kind . . . It does not brag or boast. It is not puffed up or big-headed . . . Love keeps walking even when carrying a heavy load . . . The road of love has no end” (1 Cor 13:4-8).
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There’s a difference of course between giving someone a nickname and giving someone a sacred name. If I had to guess, I’d think “Peter” or “Rock” started out as Simon’s nickname and deepened into something more. In any case, Jesus saw something in Peter, and Peter saw something in Jesus, and what they saw in each other turned into the rock that we stand on today. These early seekers of “the good road” in today’s gospel followed Jesus and grew into what we are today: traveling companions on a road that never ends.
~The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh