what's in a name?
Dear Goodyear, I'd like a job, please. You probably don't hire strangers. I used to climb mountains of your tires in my grandfather's salvage yard. My name's Joey Comeau. There. Now we aren't strangers anymore. It's Joey, not Joe or Joseph. My grandfather was Joe Comeau, and Joseph is my mother's name for me, but I have always been Joey. I worry sometimes that it's a childish name. Would a "Joe" tell jokes in bed, perform puppet shows after sex, and give every body part a different high-pitched voice? It seems unlikely. The names we choose for ourselves aren't meaningless. They're self-fulfilling prophecies.
-Joey Comeau, Overqualified
There is a story that, when I was young, my parents used to call me by a diminutive form of my given name, and at some point--I couldn't have been more than four years old--I insisted that that wasn't my name, and demanded that I be called by the "full" form of that name. Sometimes they tell me they asked me about this; my memory, which may well be false memory given how young I was, is of just snapping when they used the nickname. That's not my name, I remember saying. Call me by my name. (I remember my mother seeming hurt. That has always haunted me.)
All three of my names, given, legal, and family, are pretty generic. I tried going by a shortened form of my given name for a while, and there's still a few people who call me that; most of my friends in Boston either called me by my last name or, occasionally, by my full name; and several people have attempted to come up with variations on my name as nicknames. For the most part, nothing really sticks.
Even the username I use in most places, rcrantz, is an exercise in seeing what people come up with. Every now and then someone immediately just starts calling me "rosencrantz"; most people settle for either "r. crantz" or just "crantz"; I have gotten the occasional "r.c." or "r.c. rantz", as well. (I don't like that last one, because it sounds like the sort of name an internet shouty man would have, and that is the exact antithesis of my vibe.) And that's kind of the joke; Rosencrantz is both a bit character in Shakespeare's Hamlet and the title character in Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and especially in the Stoppard play it seems clear that no one can really tell him apart from Guildenstern; they exist as a pair. They are not fully fleshed out enough to be distinctive characters in other people's minds. No one knows what to call them.
And the long-tail pony with the thick, dark mane / Fourteen hands, four thousand names
-Eleanor Friedberger, "Other Boys"
I used to have a roommate who went by the name Rachie, and one time another roommate was introducing her to some friends, and said something to the end of "This is Rachie--or, well, that's what I call her," as if he was trying to assert some ownership over the only name I had ever heard her use. This was infuriating enough that it has stuck in my memory (I think I even put that in a short story at one point, this is just such a deeply shitty thing to do to someone), and the fact that it is infuriating is kind of fascinating. Names can be a deeply personal thing, a show of intimacy and affection, and that framing, the "oh yeah this is the cool special name I call her" when it's just the name she used with everyone, felt so nakedly manipulative.
Because that's absolutely a thing. The names we call each other aren't meaningless; I remember once falling into an anxiety spiral because a friend called me by a name she otherwise wouldn't have, because she wasn't part of the group that called me that. It felt wrong. (I was also even more neurotic then than I am now, if you can imagine.)
This is a thing I find myself using in fiction (and then usually walking back so as not to confuse people, which I think I'm going to stop doing): characters with many names, characters with one name, characters who only use nicknames when they're upset with someone, characters who haven't gone by that name in years, characters who don't know why they have that nickname . . . names are important.
(I also very deliberately didn't name any characters in my short story Full Bloom from earlier this year, which I would like it if you read. I don't remember why I made that choice but I like it.)
I don't even know her name, and maybe that's for the best
-Johanna Warren, "Follow"
And then there's the friend I had in high school where I didn't know her name for . . . several months, if memory serves? I think I missed the introductions, and there she was, just a regular part of the group, and by the time I realized I should probably know her name it was already way too late.
I love this story, even if there's not much to it, because on some level it doesn't matter. It's not hard to imagine two people talking every day for years, for their whole lives, and never actually exchanging names. It wouldn't change anything! You'd eventually develop a name for them--even if it's just "that girl," as in the case of my aforementioned friend, or something a little more thematically appropriate.
I find I seldom call people directly by their names; they are useful to refer to someone but context is generally sufficient to address them. And in the grand scheme of things people don't notice. Names are amazing, and powerful, but also, you don't need them. We don't need a word for a concept in order to be able to imagine that concept; if that concept becomes important enough we will form a word for it. It's the same way with people.
Do you need to know someone's name to be kind to them? To play games with them? To help them when they need help? To share a moment of understanding? To brighten up their day? To feel a sense of companionship?
How do you choose your form? How do you choose your name? How do you choose your life? How do you choose the time you must exhale and kick and rise?
-Joanna Newsom, "Divers"
I wonder sometimes if Joey is right about our names being self-fulfilling prophecies. (Oh, I'm sorry, did you think I wouldn't integrate my sectional quotes into the text of the post? Well buckle up, buttercup, this page is now entirely native advertising for fifteen year old epistolary novels.) Did my choosing what name to be called when I was four shape my life? Was some budding aspect of my personality expressing itself in the preference? Or was I just doing what children do and lashing out and trying to exert some control over a world where I had none?
There is no easy answer--there is never an easy answer. But names do change things. I have never had eggnog entirely because the name sounded repulsive to me when I was younger and picky and now I just have no drive to seek it out. Even if there is nothing about a name that changes the inherent quality of a thing, or a person, it will change our perception, and our perception shapes our actions, and that creates a feedback cycle. Would not a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Depends on what the other name is, really.
Names are such a powerful thing. We (humanity, together, collectively) have built up entire traditions around them--names as promises to live up to, names as people whose legacy we want to carry on, names as descriptions of who we are. We give each other nicknames as ways to show affection affection, as ways of breaking down formality, as ways of keeping people at a distance, as combinations thereof. If language is what defines us as a species, the name is our unique flourish, our signature--something by which we can be known.
And what a terrifying and wonderful thing it is, to be known.
This post was originally an entry for Noel B's Microblogvember prompts on Cohost. Cohost is gone now, but I am collecting some of my best writing from there on here.