On Names...

What's in a name? It's true, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but were it named a gore-turd, I doubt many would smell it. It'd certainly hold diminished sway in matters of romance. So perhaps there may be something in a name.

Ancient Egyptian priests sought to discover the names of the gods because they believed to invoke a god's name was to invoke a god's power. For similar reasons, ancient Hebrews were bound by a potent taboo that kept the name of their own omnipotent God shrouded in unspeakable mystery. Because names have a power. They have a soul. They have transformative magic. The simple act of naming a pig, for instance, is a strange alchemy that changes it from meat to a pet. From an it to a he. From bacon to Rufus.

Your name, I promise, was agonized over. It was discussed and debated to no end. Lists were made. Hours if not days or months of thought were put into it. It was likely first uttered before you were even born, bringing a smile to your parents — Yes, that's it; that's who this new person will be. It encapsulates history and aspirations and has, over time, tangled its roots into your very identity. And it's the same with anything, really. Cities, streets, mountains, ships, inventions. Names are agonized over, because the name will become the very thing, and the thing will become the name. Names are tested, tasted, and argued. Anyone may have only a handful of opportunities to name something, but each is its own ordeal.

So imagine what it is to constantly be naming things; to be an author of fiction; to give every nameless person, place, or thing the calculated moniker of something real. It could be a world as small as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County or Lovecraft's Arkham, or as wide as Baum's Oz or Tolkein's Middle Earth, or as unfathomably vast as Banks' interstellar Culture or Herbert's Dune — where the scale of the naming has made it an altogether different sort of endeavor. And none of them, from Faulkner to Herbert, from Stan Lee to Homer, from Chaucer to Whedon, none would dream of saying a name is unimportant.

Just imagine if Stagger Lee was Sonny Lee, or if Vesper Lynd was Prudence Rectum. There is a very deliberate reason Dracula is not named Nigel or Walter. Just as it's no coincidence the cryptic Captain Nemo's name is Latin for "No One," or that a fellow called Remus Lupin transforms into a wolf. And beyond that, just the way a name sounds can say so much. Think of Atticus Finch or Forrest Gump or Moriarty. Dickens was a master in the poetry of naming. Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist, Mister Fezziwig, Abel Magwitch, and so on. You need only speak the syllables to begin to know these characters; before they utter a word — just from the way the cadence tastes on your tongue. Names can be carefully designed to trip certain wires in your mind whether you know it or not. Names contain a simple kind of power in that they are the beginning of your story. They are the very thing itself in the most perfect of nutshells.

What's in a name? As much as you decide to put in it, I think. And for my part, more is far far better than less.