The “titles” of hymns are generally their initial words.
That’s a rather broad comment,
Cluny.
Consider the examples below.
“O Say Can You See” is really not the title of our country’s song. You would much more likely see it called “The National Anthem” or by its true title “The Star-Spangled Banner” in a hymnal. I certainly do not see the very popular “Here I Am, Lord” titled “I the Lord of Sea and Sky” or “Be Not Afraid” called “You Shall Cross the Barren Desert.”
However, some hymnals do, in fact, use this practice: GIA Publications in its hymnals calls a well-known song “You Satisfy the Hungry Heart.” Just about every other publisher calls it by its actual title “Gift of Finest Wheat.” (This is also not to be confused with its tune name, either BICENTENNIAL or FINEST WHEAT.) I’m not sure if GIA does this across the board, but it is really misleading and confusing.
Where some additional confusion may come is in certain hymnals, especially older ones, where the individual hymns are not titled at the top of the page. In these cases, a heading for the subject or theme of the hymn would be the only thing appearing above. At the end of these and most hymnals is found an
Index of Titles and First Lines. In this case, it’s possible someone might never know the actual title of a particular hymn.
So ultimately, it depends on the hymnal. Any good index should always include the first lines as well as the titles. But [in my opinion], a hymn should be given its proper title at the top of the page. So if
AJV had access to a WLP hymnal, that poster might have figured out that the title of the hymn was “Mary’s Song.” UPDATE: “Mary’s Song” is also included in OCP’s
Journeysongs, Second Edition.
You can be guaranteed that “Yoo-hoo dwell in the shelter of the Lord” is not the name of ANY hymn, no matter how popular it may be. (Oops–did I spell that wrong?
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