Somewhere in that stack of divorce papers, your name got shorter. It became "Respondent." Or "Petitioner." On the custody calendar, you became "Dad's weekend." At your ex's family cookout, you became the guy whose name nobody says anymore. And if you're honest, there's been at least one night when you stood in front of the bathroom mirror and wondered who, exactly, was looking back at you.

For years, I've opened my workshops with one question: "Who are you?" Almost every time, somebody answers with his name. Then he leans back, satisfied, like he just sank a free throw. So I let the silence marinate. I stand there with him for a while. Then I ask the follow-up: "But what does your name mean?"

That's when the shoulders start shrugging.

Your name tells people what to call you. On its own, it tells them very little about who you are. The rest is waiting for you to go dig it up.

My full name is Steven Bernard Berlack. Steven comes from the Greek stephanos, a crown. I am the Crowned One. Bernard comes from old Germanic roots meaning strong and brave as a bear. And Berlack? That's what was left of my great-great-grandfather's surname after an Ellis Island officer couldn't pronounce it. He was a young Prussian Jewish immigrant who arrived with nothing but determination, and he was in no position to argue with a man holding a clipboard.

So when someone asks me who I am, I tell them. I'm royalty, brave as a bear, descended from people who refuse to stay down. And I carry myself that way. If you've ever seen me in my suit, tie and fedora, now you know why.

Is that a little dramatic? Maybe. I'll take dramatic over directionless any day of the week. Knowing what my name means gave me a compass. When my life fell apart after divorce, that compass still pointed north, even on the days I couldn't see two feet in front of me.

If you think all this name business is soft and sentimental, let me introduce you to some hard science.

In 2017, researchers led by Yonat Zwebner at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem published a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology titled "We Look Like Our Names." Participants were shown a stranger's photograph and asked to pick that person's real name from a list of four or five options. In every experiment, they beat random chance, landing at 25 to 40 percent accuracy versus 20 or 25 percent, even when ethnicity, age and other socioeconomic variables were controlled for. The team even found the effect using a computer program and 94,000 faces.

How could that possibly work? Zwebner believes the process behind it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, if other people expect certain things from a person, that person may eventually fulfill those expectations. Over decades, we grow into the name we were handed.

Now think about that for a second, brother. If a label somebody else picked for you before you could crawl can leave its mark on your face... what could happen when you decide, on purpose, what your name stands for?

A lot of us were named after somebody. A grandfather. A father. An uncle. The pastor. Your dad's favorite ballplayer. A name passed down is a quiet set of expectations, and most of us never stop to ask what they were.

Muhammad Ali knew exactly what his birth name expected of him, and he decided he wanted something else. He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., named after his father. After his conversion, he told the world: "Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn't choose it, and I didn't want it." And when opponent Ernie Terrell refused to recognize the change before their 1967 fight, Ali spent the bout demanding, "What's my name?" Ali claimed his name in the ring, in the press and in history.

Barack Obama took the opposite road to the same destination. He grew up as Barry. According to Newsweek's reporting, friends at Occidental College began calling him by his formal name, and he came to prefer it. When he came home for Christmas in 1980, he told his mother and grandparents: no more Barry. Here's what gets me about that story. The name Barack tied him more firmly to his Kenyan father, who had left him and his mother when he was young. He took the name of the man who walked away... and decided for himself what it would mean.

I understand that one personally. My father was killed in Vietnam before he ever got the chance to meet me. The man who taught me what my name meant was Grandpa.

When I was a little boy, I tried to steal a bag of potato chips from the corner store. My mother whipped me good, but I don't remember the whipping. What I remember is Grandpa sitting me down on his bed. In a very low voice, he placed a pencil on the nightstand. "Son, it starts with this." He set a book beside it. "Then it becomes this." He moved a big lamp next to the book. "Then it will be this." He told me we'd always been on the right side of the law. Then he pointed at that nightstand and said, "Berlacks don't do that," and walked out.

Grandpa taught me what Berlack meant with a pencil, a book and a lamp. I've never forgotten it.

Some of you are reading this and thinking, "Steve, my mother made my name up," or "I looked it up, and it means 'small,' so thanks a lot." Some of you share a name with a father you'd rather not resemble.

Here's the thing: you hold a power the rest of us don't. You get to write the first chapter of what your name means, through how you treat people and how they come to see you because of it. Psychologist Dan McAdams of Northwestern University has spent decades studying what he calls narrative identity. In his book The Stories We Live By, he describes how each of us builds a sense of self by shaping our life into a story. Your name is the title on the cover of that story. You decide what the chapters say.

Divorce is generous with nicknames you never asked for. Failure. Deadbeat. Weekend Dad. The Ex. A couple of them might sting because there's a grain of truth in there somewhere. Fine. Own the grain. Then decide which names stay.

Remember Ellison's words: our names "must be made our own." That puts the decision in your hands, every single day.

And if your name means "brave as a bear" and you've been spending your evenings on the couch with Cheetos dust on your shirt... brother, it's time for the bear to get up.

Every so often in my workshops, someone shouts out with real pride, "My name means...!" And I watch his face light up as he explains how he found out and what it's meant to him. The rest of the room usually gives him that look, the one reserved for the know-it-all in the front row. But a few people catch it. I can see the light start to flicker in their eyes.

I believe you can never answer "Why am I here?" until you answer "Who are you?" first. Your name is where that answer begins. Some of it was given to you. The rest is yours to claim.

So the next time someone asks who you are, give them more than what to call you.

Who are you, brother?