message to string?

Im wondering if this is possible....
say you have a listen event with the string msg as the message....
and the data contained in msg is "ralph".
you also have pre defined string ralph = "somthing";

so what Im wondering if is possible at all is the data becoming a string (or other such variable)

this make sense?

I.e. when the msg is ralph, I would like the output to be "somthing" without tons and tons of "if"s

TIA

strided list
or 2 lists working in tandom
ie

definitions = ["bob","something", "ralph", apples];

or
triggers = ["bob","ralph"];
definitions = ["something", "apples"]

ahhhhh....that makes sense!
Grazie!