What's in a name?
I just finished reading
Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead. It is a spectacular work of fiction, with a touch of social satire, commentary, and practical philosophy. Ooh, just what I look for and love in a novel!
The back cover description reads, "The town of Winthrop has decided it needs a new name. The resident software millionaire wants to call it New Prospera; the mayor wants to return to the original choice of the founding black settlers; and the town's aristocracy sees no reason to change the name at all. What they need, they realize, is a nomenclature consultant. And, it turns out, the consultant needs them. But in a culture overwhelmed by marketing, a name is everything, and our hero's efforts may result in not just a new name for the town but a new and subtler truth about it as well."
While reading, I started to think about the importance of names, or rather, the importance we place on a name. As Shakespeare's Juliet said so eloquently, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet." It is the classic identity law, thanks to Gertrude Stein, "A rose is a rose is a rose." But names
do matter to some extent. Why do we prefer certain brands over others? Certain schools? Why do parents name their children after famous people? In turn, these names become equated with the qualities both physical and innate that the person possesses (or doesn't). Enough rambling ....
The most thought provoking citations from the book:
"He imagined that all of them had their true names written on their name tags. That would be something. That would be honest, he whispered to himself. LIAR. BED WETTER. ... If everyone could see everyone else's true name, we could cut out all the subterfuge and camouflage. The deception that was their stock in trade, and the whole world's favorite warm treat. ROMANTIC. FAILURE. EMPTY. ... Of course it began at birth - by giving their children names, parents did their offspring the favor of teaching them how to lie with their very first breath. Because what we go by is rarely what makes us go. GRIFTER. SINNER. DOOMED," (170).
"Isn't it great when you're a kid and the whole world is full of anonymous things? ... Everything is bright and mysterious until you know what it is called and then all the light goes out of it. All those flying gliding things are just
birds. And etc. Once we knew the name of it, how could we ever come to love it? He told himself: What he had given to all those things had been the right name, but never the true name. For things had true natures, and they hid behind false names, beneath the skin we gave them," (182).
"A name that got to the heart of the thing - that would be miraculous. But he never got to the heart of the thing, he just slapped a bandage on it to keep the pus in. What is the word, he asked himself, for that elusive thing? It was on the tip of his tongue. What is the name for that which is always beyond our grasp? What do you call
that which escapes?" (183).
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