What is in name?

In a reflection, or musing, I contemplated names: meaning, purpose, and perception.
A name, first and foremost, is a title and typically one of the first things about a person we learn. In biblical times, names were chosen, typically, as a thanks to God, expressing a triumph of sorts (this is why many biblical names refer to God). Today names are chosen more through the steady application of a specific criteria: vanity. Of course thought is still given to meaning, but the emphasis is on originality and sound.
But upon the perception of a name: not of others on the person, but of the named and the namers. Growing up, as many of us did, I often expelled contempt for my name and wished to live by another. I believe that this is tied into the general rebellious nature of children against their parents. The name is, or was, a symbol of what the parents hoped for in their child, and rebellion was against that hope, against the feeling of being forced into a box that is uncomfortable to the one stuffed inside. So when anyone wants to change their name, it is not necessarily the image they wish to change, but the deep seeded hope for their own life that they wish to express.
I came upon this while pondering over my pen name, the one you see on the side of my profile, RS Althaus. It is a vanity, the "RS," chosen specifically to draw out the question, "what does it stand for?" But I will tell you, and I will tell you the meaning, thus divulging the hope I have for my own life.

Rema Sterling Althaus (faithful little star from the old house).