Names hold great meaning for children and are, for many, the first word they learn to recognize by sight. Children have a great interest in learning to write their names as well as the names of their family and friends. Adults working with young children can take advantage of this interest to introduce a variety of early literacy concepts. Using children's own names to help beginning readers and writers make connections between letters and sounds has been a practice of preschool and kindergarten teachers for many years. It is extremely important that early childhood educators, while advancing children's literacy skills, maintain a developmentally appropriate curriculum. Activities that use children's own names provide a natural, easy approach to helping children understand functions of print, increasing their phonemic awareness, introducing letter-sound correspondence (the alphabetic principle), and fostering letter and word recognition. Some suggested activities are presented in this article.