What's in a Name?

Question: Why does the angel that Yaakov is wrestling with ask him what his name is (32:28)? Does the angel really want to know? Is it possible that he doesn't already know? Essentially, we must recognize that the angel's question is rhetorical. The angel is not asking Yaakov's name for his own sake, but rather for Yaakov's sake: as Yaakov confronts the question, he must confront himself -- and, over the course of this process, the transformation of his being becomes more complete. Let's consider this reading.
Before his battle with the angel, Yaakov sends messengers to inform Esav of his wishes for peace. They return to tell him that Esav is approaching with four-hundred men. Yaakov responds to this news in four ways: 1) he is afraid (32:8), 2) he divides his camp (32:8), 3) he prays to God (32:10-4), and 4) he sends offerings to appease Esav.
Yet, after wresting with the angel, Yaakov lifts up his eyes and sees that Esav and his army are approaching head on. How does he respond? By solely dividing his camp (33:1)!
The Torah doesn't tell us that he is afraid this time, nor does it mention any further passive tactics of conflict avoidance. What happened in the match to effect such a change in Yaakov vis-a-vis Esav's increasing proximity? The obvious answer is that he gained a name. But what's in a name? For Yaakov, everything.
Yaakov is someone who was born holding on to his twin brother's heel (25:26), and he is named accordingly: aakev is the Hebrew word for heel. And Yaakov does fulfill the significance of his name; in the place where Esav should stand, Yaakov stands: he purchases Esav's birthright; he receives his blessing.
So Yaakov is named according to his relationship with Esav; and then from there, he is characterized in opposition to his brother's cunning outdoorsmanship, as a simple man who dwells in tents (25:27)! From there, his own self-definition continues to unfold further against the backdrop of Esav in his need to flee from his home.
So much of what makes Yaakov Yaakov has to do with Esav; some of what constitutes Yaakov's identity was even taken from him. Perhaps Yaakov lived with this awareness, and was thus never entirely comfortable with what was his. This possibility becomes most apparent in the case of the blessing. Could Yaakov ever really wear the blessing comfortably, knowing that it wasn't made for him? Could he ever feel that a blessing which began as a response to the smell of Esav's clothes (27:27) really belonged to him? Perhaps there is a side of Yaakov that never felt entirely at home with the unfolding of his character. His identity was, in a very real sense, hewn from Esav's. And because of this, maybe there is in him a certain lack of self-possession, perhaps even an ambiguity, concerning the substance of his identity...
But then Yaakov leaves his home (27:10), and in so doing, he leaves his brother behind and goes on to a place where he is able to self-define against a backdrop that is not Esav. This is probably the first time he has ever really had a chance to identify himself without playing off of Esav, and he gets to do so for many, many years.
And then he has to return home (30:25), to Esav! This may be, in part, why he's so frightened. He's faced with a double-threat of destruction: the precious camp that he has built over the years may be annihilated; and if it is not, the precious identity that he built over the years may collapse back into Esav's, and his sense of true self-definition will dissolve away. Again, Yaakov will be Esav's heel.
But remember: after his mysterious wrestling match, the Torah no longer says that Yaakov is afraid in the face of Esav. Why?
There are two (contradictory) midrashim that I think bring the answer into light. In the first (Midrash Tanchuma, Vayishlach 7), the man that Yaakov wrestles with is identified as the most distinguished of all angels, Michael. This midrash has Michael asking Yaakov why he is afraid of Esav when he has prevailed against such an angel as himself. The second midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 78:4; see, also, Rashi, Bereishit 32:30) also takes the man to be an angel, but in this one, the angel -- by definition of being an angel -- has no fixed name. The midrash explains that angels' names depend on their missions, and that as their missions change, so too their names change.
What seems to be implicit in the second midrash is that angels actually have no fixed identity: as their missions change, so too do their identities change; and it is precisely because of this latter change that their names change. This midrash thus clarifies the angel's answer when Yaakov asks him his name: "Lamah zeh, tishal lishmi?" "Why is this, you will ask for my name?"(32:30). The angel is telling Yaakov that his name is not going to convey any more information about his identity than his presence does, since what he is today may not be what he is tomorrow. And thus we have here a Yaakov who is face to face with the embodiment of one of his greatest fears; namely, that the identity which he has defined for himself apart from Esav is like the angel's identity: unfixed, uncontrollably transient, and on the cusp of change.
Yaakov's wrestling with the angel thus begins to look like Yaakov's own internal struggle brought out and made real (by God) in order to show him that a) despite his fears, he is in full possession of who he is, and b) his identity will endure his reunion with Esav. Hence the strength of the first midrash: since Yaakov has prevailed against the angel (that is, the embodiment of his own fear), he has also prevailed against the threat that Esav represents; he therefore has no reason to fear him (on the level of identity, at least).
So how did Yaakov's wrestling with the angel help him to overcome his fear? Yaakov answers the question himself when he says "Ra'iti Elohim, panim-el-panim, ve'tinatzel nafshi" (I saw Elohim face to face and my self was saved) (32:31). Here he is not only describing what happened, but also expressing a realization: that his self has become and becomes defined -and remains so- against the backdrop of a world of events orchestrated by God. In other words, Yaakov realizes that the ultimate backdrop against which he has to (and always must) define himself has been (and always must be) God, no matter against whom he may be defining himself at any given moment. And this is why Yaakov considers his nefesh, his self, to have been saved - because he has achieved a sense of lasting self-possession which he had heretofore been lacking. It was the angel's mission to provide for Yaakov an experience in which he would come to understand who he, as Yaakov, truly is: namely, Ish Roeh Elokim -- Yisrael. Yaakov is a man who sees God; he sees that God is whom he stands in front of, and that God is whom he stands out from.