ABSTRACT
This essay explores the connections in religious thought between the naming of God and friendship. As studied within Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theology, and as invoked in practice and devotion, divine names shape both human relationships to God and relationships within communities. As events of revelation-given by God-names of God signify who God is, how God relates to the world, what we understand of who God is, and how we thereby relate to God. Furthermore, as signs given by people to one another, divine names also shape relations between people, serving as mediums of communication that open new possibilities of community. Like any sign, then, a name of God: 1) relates to other signs; 2) gives knowledge of God-the referent of the name; and 3) establishes relations between the users of the signs, in this case God and a community (or communities). Names of God thus bear several dimensions of significance: syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics.1
