Paper on Names

We give names to everything. We name our children; we name our pets; we even give names to our boats, cars, and airplanes. Why do we do this? The answer is that, whether we realize it or not, names convey and give power to and over things and people. From the early beginnings when humans first started to speak, giving names to people or objects has given both the speaker and the object power.

We are a species of language users, and every culture in the world has used orality to gain an understanding of the world through words. We use words and names to model things in our mind and test how they relate to each other. By learning a new word we add a new tool to our mental toolkit, and from this comes the idea that we are gaining power over something by knowing its name.

In the book of Genesis from the Bible, God gives Adam the power to name all the creatures of the earth. This naming represents his dominance over them. It has long been traditional in many oral cultures to have a secret name for a child, one which was not known to anyone except the parents and the child and which was not used in everyday speech. This secret name gives the bearer power, but can give power over that person if someone else also knows the name. Even today, the Pope and sometimes monarchs still assume a new name of office, different from their given name and symbolic of both the momentousness of the event and the assumption of an office of great power. Names of power were so sacred that among Jews the word God (YHWH, from which we get the names Yahweh and Jehovah) was absolutely never uttered, except by the high priest on Yom Kippur. The events and manifestations of the natural world have been given names and even embodiments in gods and goddesses since ancient times. The sun, the wind, the ocean have all had gods or goddesses to personify them at one time or another. However, since the advent of writing and print, some of this awe of names has disappeared.

Even though cultures have moved from the oral tradition to a written one, names are stilled viewed as powerful. In this day and age in which we have largely banished superstition, names still have the ability to influence people.

This can be seen in family environments. Do you remember when you were in trouble as a child? A mother calling "Dan, get over here!" simply did not have the same spine-chilling effect on someone as, "Jackson Daniel Benjamin Miller, get over here!" Using the full name somehow implies a greater threat of reprisal than a simple first- or nick-name does.

Overtly aggressive speakers have a tendency to insert the name of the person to whom they are speaking into the stream of conversation: "I think you're wrong," has a slightly different tone to it than, "Bill, I think you're wrong." Saying it once may mean nothing, but doing it again and again over the course of a conversation it has the collective effect of applying a steady psychological pressure from a position of verbal aggression. Not to mention, it’s really annoying to talk to someone who drops your name with every other sentence.

Names can also show familiarity or formality in the way they are used. This is partially a matter of trust (in light of the power of names), but also simply a matter of time and experience. The use of a first name or nickname by a stranger or social inferior (students, children, underlings at work) can cause offense because it may assume not only social equality but a history of personal intimacy that may not actually exist. Sales representatives and junk mailings make a point of littering their pitches with the name of the prospective buyer: "Erik, this is a special offer just for you. You, Erik Fitzpatrick, may already be a winner." Using the familiar names often tends to lull people into a sense of security. Also, there is the fact that each person is trained from birth to react to their own name. This is, of course, part of the reason we have names in the first place – to get a particular person's attention. To speak a person's name forces their attention to shift to the speaker – a tool which can be used benignly but can be also be a subtle form of verbal domination.

Names are traditionally thought to be fixed. This is connected to the idea in many cultures that the power to name a thing is the power to control or even create it. Related to this is the idea that each thing has one and only one name and that that name is what that thing is. Have you ever had an older relative scoff at the idea of changing your name? That's why. Just as a rock is always going to be a rock, Harry is always going to be Harry – whatever he may call himself, he's still Harry; that's just who he is. In the same theme, names not only name a thing, but they label them into groups. For example, family names group everyone with that last name into a certain set. When women marry in Western tradition, they take the family name of their new husband and so become part of a new family, changing not only their names but their ties and affiliations. The Tsimshians of the North West coast of North America have a similar belief about names. For the Tsimshian, names for people don’t belong so much to an individual, but to a “house” or line of descendants based on the mother. Each matrilineage has its own set of names, which encodes heredity, such as names of ancestors; past and present territories; and the oral histories, such as names of heroes. No two people can have the same name at the same time, and one “house” will not use a name or names of another house.

Names also give power to the thing that they label. Trucks are named The Beast, or boats are named Wind Dancer or Escape, dogs are named Brutus. In each it’s not the power we want over them, but the power that we want them to hold themselves. Most of what the Tsimshians knew or saw was named, including houses, canoes, copper shields, and other artifacts, as well as places, supernatural entities, dogs, and so forth. To them, to give a thing or place a name was thought to be the equivalent of giving it an identity or value. Naming is a way that they establish relations in the known and unknown world. The names create a web of social relations that are manifested through the use of those names.

Even ideas are named in such a way as to give them power over themselves. A well chosen name wins an argument by taking upon itself its conclusion. If the government calls cash subsidies to foreign government "foreign aid", who can be so mean spirited as to argue with that. Describe funding to the public schools as "aid to education" and the question of whether additional spending in the public school system will really results in more education is effectively skipped over. Environmentalists can brand something "pollution"; it then no longer becomes necessary to offer evidence that it is bad, since everyone already knows pollution is damaging. Take for example, thermal pollution. This is simply warm water, albeit given a bad name. Can you imagine telling your waitress that your coffee was too cold, that it needed more thermal pollution? We can even duel with names. Both "right to life" and "pro-choice" are clearly good things, so how could anyone possibly be against either of them?

The most recent example of the power of names, President Obama's economic policy, makes an excellent illustration. Everyone – including Mr. Obama, when he was running for President – is against deficit spending. Rename it a "stimulus package" and everyone suddenly thinks that it’s a great plan. Well, perhaps not everyone, but enough people to get it started, at least. The name neatly evades the question of whether having the government borrow money and spend it is actually a way of getting out of a recession – a claim for which substantiation is conspicuously thin. It is stimulus, so obviously it must stimulate. Right?

The potential of names did not die with the advent of print culture. Names, both today and in past oral cultures, definitely convey power over things and people as well as give them power. The belief that as a print culture we have moved beyond this idea is simply not true. Naming things gives humans control in their world. Without an array of names to label people and objects, we would have no understanding of the world around us and no way to talk about it with others. We would have no way to tell our friends that we saw John or that he was driving a new car or that the woman in the front seat was definitely not his wife.