Faith in a Christian God is central to the worldview of the eponymous Young Goodman Brown. With that faith comes an emphasis on virtue and piety, which are mentioned in this story and feature heavily in Hawthorne's work. Brown sees Faith, his wife, as embodying these qualities. She also serves as his inspiration to resist the devil in favor of God. For these reasons, Faith is aptly named.
Brown addresses his wife as "dearest heart" before he departs, suggests she would die at the thought of his transgression, and believes he will "cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven." How Brown views his wife comes into focus early in the story, and it is easy to see why he has faith in her.
Faith functions as more of an idea than person in this story. Each time Brown is explicitly tempted, he cites Faith as his reason for resistance. At the first such occurrence, he won't even entertain the notion:
"Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, "there is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own!"
His responses follow suit when he is subsequently tempted. This explains his devastation when he believes he sees Faith at the devilish convert ceremony, as well as why he views her differently afterward. The role of faith and belief in the story as it pertains to the protagonist and his wife, Faith, is why she is so aptly named.
Brown's wife Faith, at the beginning of the story, poignantly asks him to stay with her. Though she does not know that he is on a quest to explore the nature of evil, she senses that some kind of destruction will occur as a result of whatever Brown is about to do.
Usually Hawthorne's symbolism in the use of names is a bit more subtle than it is here. However, Goodman Brown's wife Faith represents not only religious faith, but faith in the underlying goodness of man, which Brown loses after his encounter with the mysterious stranger. The stranger reveals things about mankind that Brown had scarcely guessed at before, such as the persecutions Brown's father and grandfather had carried out against the indigenous Americans and others. Brown's fate is determined by his overreaction to his new awareness of evil. He ends up rejecting all of humanity, including his wife Faith. The whole "message" of Hawthorne is that extremism, fanaticism of any kind, is wrong and that those who reject people because of alleged or real imperfections (as Brown does) are losing their "faith" and thereby destroying themselves.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story "Young Goodman Brown," the narrator refers to Goodman Brown’s wife as "aptly named." The reason that she is “aptly named” is because she is both allegorically and ironically named.
When the story begins, Goodman Brown is leaving his wife for a nighttime errand: meeting the devil in the woods. Goodman Brown repeatedly announces that he is ready to return home to his wife Faith, but the devil insists he continue on, deeper and deeper into the woods. Hawthorne’s use of allegory is not particularly subtle: Faith is what allows Goodman Brown to resist the devil.
The irony is that as they travel deeper and deeper into the woods, Goodman Brown believes he hears Faith and finds her pink ribbon on the ground:
“My Faith is gone!” cried he, after one stupefied moment. “There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! For to thee is this world given.”
Hawthorne’s apt—and allegorical—naming is on full display here, and it’s clear to see how one could substitute a lower-case "f" for the capital one with which her name begins. It is fitting that Faith and Goodman Brown appear together “on the verge of wickedness”; if she falls, then he is, of course, without faith.
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