What’s in a name? My name. Your name. Nickname. Namesake. A rose by any other name; Nom de guerre; Nom de plume (as in ‘the nom de plume of my aunt is Dansla Jardin’). Forenames; Surnames; Stage-names; Pseudonyms; The Man with No Name[1]. Names don’t simply say who we are, they tell us a great deal about the cultures who use them and how that culture has been influenced by external factors. And just as we’re supposed to grow in resemblance to our dogs, It’s always been a bit of a worry to me that we might grow to become more like our names - a genuine issue when you consider we don’t usually pick them for ourselves and even more so if you happen to be called 'Hitler'. Names are our parent’s and parental-culture’s way of keeping tabs on us long after we have moved on and away.
In 1916, Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale) was published. This posthumous epic gave us such items as the linguistic sign, the signifier, the signified, and the referent[2]. A name is a linguistic sign of a sort: it indicates the sound and meaning of the word which has come to be accepted as the personal – indeed, intimate – identifier of you or me. “Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully. “Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: “my name means the shape I am—and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.”[3] This name-sign (or symbol) is of course an utterly artificial thing. It does not occur in the wild and you can’t buy one in a shop, although you can inherit them, and names are frequently handed down from parent to child even unto the seventh generation and beyond[4]. Names, though artificial, are also fairly organic creations and often morph according to the tenets of contemporary fashion. The etymology and history of proper names is quite fascinating. One needs only explore the depths of ‘Kylie’ (which, depending upon your information source might suggest either a type of boomerang or a small Scottish cow), to see that present-day names are not necessarily connected to their beginnings or in many cases, to any semblance of reason.
Take ‘America’, for instance. The name-symbol ‘america’ comes from the early medieval Italian form of “Henry” [5]. Amerigo Vespucci was the Italian explorer who christened the continent of America (from Americus, the Latin form of his name). So why not call the place the ‘United States of Henry’? Well that’s because a country is too big to have only a personal name – a national moniker demands a certain element of grandeur and magnificence as well as a noble estrangement which all sounds rather posh. However any parent who calls their child ‘Equatorial Guinea’ is in for trouble during the school years. As for the Welsh toponym of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch[6], it’s always a difficult matter to assess names from a different language and one of the reasons we tend to stick to what we feel comfortable with.[7] And why do we insist on calling our children by any specific name? Why not allow the child to choose their own name when they are old enough to understand the point of it all? We could opt for a childhood name and then an adult name just as the Pope does on his ascension. Besides which, I always wanted to be called David. I think it’s a gorgeous name. The velvet vowel-sounds and the soft thud of the final ‘d’ make it quite luscious to my ears. Unfortunately the West is not yet able to separate the sound from the signifier and Johnny Cash has long advised against a ‘boy named Sue’. I don’t think a girl called David would go down terribly well in Melbourne[8] and the notion of a feminised suffix is cringe-making.
But names are also designed to intimidate, hence the virtual title of “Victoria Regina Saxe-Coburg”, or the young Danish prince’s Christian Valdemar Henri John, or even Dickens’ “Volumnia Dedlock”. And there are some glorious spoof-making websites where you can design your own name: http://www.masquerademaskarts.com/memes/peculiartitle.php .
American suffragette Lucy Stone refused to take her husband’s name upon their marriage and, in 1921, founded the Lucy Stone League[9]. The league made a huge issue of this practice as part of the effort for women’s rights. The League’s motto is “My name is the symbol for my identity and must not be lost.” So what’s a name all about these days? Does it really matter what we call ourselves or what we’re called by (sometimes) witless parents? In our postmodern social order where everything is transient and superficial shouldn’t we rethink the meaning and power of names? We change everything else about ourselves – career, location, marital status, so why not then our names? What is this sacred cow that we drag around, that we hold close and shelter from the storms of cultural fashion even if we hate the bloody thing? Our name is a thing of great power and influence and yet we appear too terrified to consider any alteration unless we’re compelled by some antiquated ritual or perhaps fall under the sinister cloak of a witness protection program.
Perhaps it’s that we – within our various societies – are simply too lazy to consider changing the names we were given at birth or sometime thereafter. Perhaps we consider it an insult to our parents or an affectation which brands us as self-obsessed. Given however that self-obsession appears to be de rigour until one reaches middle-age, then why not? The only social bloc for whom a constant changing-of-the-name would cause a genuine and major problem is the government. It is by our names and by those fiddly little tax file numbers that we are neatly catalogued and tracked. The Human brain cannot place indiscriminate values on an endless series of numbers, but it can immediately assess the likely personage of one Reginald Kenneth Dwight. Middle aged, British connections, English-speaking. Interestingly, the aspiring musician, Elton Hercules John, felt the same and promptly dumped it. Are we limited by the names we bear? Can we change the way we behave or the way society permits us to behave if we cease being conventional? Is the power of our name powerful enough to move us towards (or keep us from) the sort of person we want to be? If we had the chance, would we be a Bloody Mary or a Harvey Wallbanger[10], a Plain Jane or even an Uncle Sam?
References
[1] Clint Eastwood’s character in A Fistful of Dollars, Dir. Sergio Leone (1964).
[2] Encyclopaedia Britannica Online: Ferdinand de Saussure, (accessed: 2 January, 2007),
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9065908/Ferdinand-de-Saussure
[3] Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Macmillan, London (1872).
[4] According to the Danish rule of patrilineal primogeniture, the 2005 addition to the Royal family has no surname. Prince Christian will eventually become King Christian XI, the seventh monarch in the royal Glücksborg family.
[5] Which in itself comes from the Germanic name Heimerich which meant "home ruler", composed of the elements heim "home" and ric "power, ruler". This name was introduced into Britain by the Normans. It was borne by eight kings of England including the notorious Henry VIII, as well as six kings of France, seven kings of Germany and various Princes of Industry including automobile manufacturer Henry Ford.
[6] Literally "The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave". The Welsh are a romantic if somewhat enthusiastic people.
[7] Although the current trend for more ‘made up’ names is proliferating with a new generation of Aqualeenas, Rymons and Makaidens.
[8] Named after Lord Melbourne, British PM of 1842. Had the town been named after the gentleman’s pre-aristocratic designate, I’d now be living in the City of Lamb.
[9] Current details of the Lucy Stone League may be seen at: http://www.lucystoneleague.org/
[10] Not the cocktails.
In 1916, Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale) was published. This posthumous epic gave us such items as the linguistic sign, the signifier, the signified, and the referent[2]. A name is a linguistic sign of a sort: it indicates the sound and meaning of the word which has come to be accepted as the personal – indeed, intimate – identifier of you or me. “Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully. “Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: “my name means the shape I am—and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.”[3] This name-sign (or symbol) is of course an utterly artificial thing. It does not occur in the wild and you can’t buy one in a shop, although you can inherit them, and names are frequently handed down from parent to child even unto the seventh generation and beyond[4]. Names, though artificial, are also fairly organic creations and often morph according to the tenets of contemporary fashion. The etymology and history of proper names is quite fascinating. One needs only explore the depths of ‘Kylie’ (which, depending upon your information source might suggest either a type of boomerang or a small Scottish cow), to see that present-day names are not necessarily connected to their beginnings or in many cases, to any semblance of reason.
Take ‘America’, for instance. The name-symbol ‘america’ comes from the early medieval Italian form of “Henry” [5]. Amerigo Vespucci was the Italian explorer who christened the continent of America (from Americus, the Latin form of his name). So why not call the place the ‘United States of Henry’? Well that’s because a country is too big to have only a personal name – a national moniker demands a certain element of grandeur and magnificence as well as a noble estrangement which all sounds rather posh. However any parent who calls their child ‘Equatorial Guinea’ is in for trouble during the school years. As for the Welsh toponym of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch[6], it’s always a difficult matter to assess names from a different language and one of the reasons we tend to stick to what we feel comfortable with.[7] And why do we insist on calling our children by any specific name? Why not allow the child to choose their own name when they are old enough to understand the point of it all? We could opt for a childhood name and then an adult name just as the Pope does on his ascension. Besides which, I always wanted to be called David. I think it’s a gorgeous name. The velvet vowel-sounds and the soft thud of the final ‘d’ make it quite luscious to my ears. Unfortunately the West is not yet able to separate the sound from the signifier and Johnny Cash has long advised against a ‘boy named Sue’. I don’t think a girl called David would go down terribly well in Melbourne[8] and the notion of a feminised suffix is cringe-making.
But names are also designed to intimidate, hence the virtual title of “Victoria Regina Saxe-Coburg”, or the young Danish prince’s Christian Valdemar Henri John, or even Dickens’ “Volumnia Dedlock”. And there are some glorious spoof-making websites where you can design your own name: http://www.masquerademaskarts.com/memes/peculiartitle.php .
American suffragette Lucy Stone refused to take her husband’s name upon their marriage and, in 1921, founded the Lucy Stone League[9]. The league made a huge issue of this practice as part of the effort for women’s rights. The League’s motto is “My name is the symbol for my identity and must not be lost.” So what’s a name all about these days? Does it really matter what we call ourselves or what we’re called by (sometimes) witless parents? In our postmodern social order where everything is transient and superficial shouldn’t we rethink the meaning and power of names? We change everything else about ourselves – career, location, marital status, so why not then our names? What is this sacred cow that we drag around, that we hold close and shelter from the storms of cultural fashion even if we hate the bloody thing? Our name is a thing of great power and influence and yet we appear too terrified to consider any alteration unless we’re compelled by some antiquated ritual or perhaps fall under the sinister cloak of a witness protection program.
Perhaps it’s that we – within our various societies – are simply too lazy to consider changing the names we were given at birth or sometime thereafter. Perhaps we consider it an insult to our parents or an affectation which brands us as self-obsessed. Given however that self-obsession appears to be de rigour until one reaches middle-age, then why not? The only social bloc for whom a constant changing-of-the-name would cause a genuine and major problem is the government. It is by our names and by those fiddly little tax file numbers that we are neatly catalogued and tracked. The Human brain cannot place indiscriminate values on an endless series of numbers, but it can immediately assess the likely personage of one Reginald Kenneth Dwight. Middle aged, British connections, English-speaking. Interestingly, the aspiring musician, Elton Hercules John, felt the same and promptly dumped it. Are we limited by the names we bear? Can we change the way we behave or the way society permits us to behave if we cease being conventional? Is the power of our name powerful enough to move us towards (or keep us from) the sort of person we want to be? If we had the chance, would we be a Bloody Mary or a Harvey Wallbanger[10], a Plain Jane or even an Uncle Sam?
References
[1] Clint Eastwood’s character in A Fistful of Dollars, Dir. Sergio Leone (1964).
[2] Encyclopaedia Britannica Online: Ferdinand de Saussure, (accessed: 2 January, 2007),
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9065908/Ferdinand-de-Saussure
[3] Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Macmillan, London (1872).
[4] According to the Danish rule of patrilineal primogeniture, the 2005 addition to the Royal family has no surname. Prince Christian will eventually become King Christian XI, the seventh monarch in the royal Glücksborg family.
[5] Which in itself comes from the Germanic name Heimerich which meant "home ruler", composed of the elements heim "home" and ric "power, ruler". This name was introduced into Britain by the Normans. It was borne by eight kings of England including the notorious Henry VIII, as well as six kings of France, seven kings of Germany and various Princes of Industry including automobile manufacturer Henry Ford.
[6] Literally "The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave". The Welsh are a romantic if somewhat enthusiastic people.
[7] Although the current trend for more ‘made up’ names is proliferating with a new generation of Aqualeenas, Rymons and Makaidens.
[8] Named after Lord Melbourne, British PM of 1842. Had the town been named after the gentleman’s pre-aristocratic designate, I’d now be living in the City of Lamb.
[9] Current details of the Lucy Stone League may be seen at: http://www.lucystoneleague.org/
[10] Not the cocktails.
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