According to Swedenborg, a person's name in the Bible represents his or her entire spiritual nature, their whole state of love (good or evil) and thought (from heavenly wisdom to infernal insanity). This is why the name of the Lord is so important; it represents and embodies His perfect love and perfect wisdom, which is everything that we should worship and follow. It's easy to see that names are important in the Bible. Jehovah changed Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah, changed Jacob to Israel and included in the Ten Commandments the order that believers "shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." In the New Testament, Zacharias was told to name John the Baptist "John," and both Joseph (Matthew 1:21) and Mary (Luke 1:31) were told to name Jesus "Jesus." Jesus himself renamed Simon as Peter, and included the phrase "hallowed be thy name" in the Lord's prayer.

(Odkazy: Luke 1)

4831. 'And her name was Tamar' means the essential nature of the Church - a Church representative of spiritual and celestial things. This is clear from the meaning of 'name' as the essential nature, dealt with in 144, 145, 1754, 1896, 2009, 2724, 3006, 3421, in this case the essential nature of the Church because Tamar in this chapter represents the Church, in particular the Church representative of spiritual and celestial things which was to be established among the descendants of Judah. Tamar's representation of that Church is evident from what follows. This whole chapter deals in the internal sense with the Jewish Church, with how it was intended to become a Church representative of the spiritual and celestial things of the Lord's kingdom, as the Ancient Church had been, and to become such not only in external form but also in internal. For a Church is not a Church by virtue of its externals, that is, of its religious observances, but by virtue of its internals; for these are the essential realities, the externals merely forms expressing those realities. But the descendants of Jacob were the kind of people who had no wish to receive internal things. Among them therefore the Ancient Church could not be raised up, only that which was a representative of that Church, 4307, 4444, 4500. The internal dimension of the Church is meant here by 'Tamar', and the external by 'Judah' together with his three sons by his Canaanite wife.