beetiger

According to the Biblical story, the first job humanity had was to name everything. I imagine Adam doing his nine-to-five touching all the plants and animals, making up new words to attach to them, then coming home exhausted, handing Eve something green, saying "It's asparagus" and expecting that somehow knowing that would inspire her to turn it into dinner.

There's a long tradition which shows up in folklore, occultism, and fantasy fiction of True Names, by which an entity can be controlled, like Rumplestiltskin. A related concept is that of Names of Power, names of gods or demons that unleash powerful forces just by uttering them. The tetragrammaton. Language is indeed one of the very most powerful tools we have as a species, and these stories emphasize that. I don't personally believe in True Names. I have had many names, each with its own context: Vicki, Bumblebee, Levanah, vickibee, Vicki-Beth, Lady, sweetie, Vicki Borah, Kitty, Ms. Victoria Borah Bloom, Mrs. Bloom Sometimes I wonder though, if I could be missing something. If I could find my True Name, would I be enlightened? Would I become a part of God? Would I explode? Would that word own me?

It was being at the zoo this weekend which brought this topic to mind. People in museums and zoos name things all the time, reading the labels to each other, as if naming a thing increases their understanding of it. "That's a Blue-Spotted Jumping Scorpion." "It's a Matisse." "That polar bear's named Snowy." Many people seem satisfied with that, as if those words have told them something profound. A lot of the popular medicalized descriptions of "syndromes" fall into that trap, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Occasionally, I'm tempted to make something up, just to see if I can get sympathy or that telltale head-nodding. "Please don't be personally offended if I nod off in the middle of your story, I've got a borderline case of Takasago Syndrome."

Writing fiction, especially role-playing fiction, requires being a modern day xenophilic Adam, naming people, places and things with abandon. It's a challenge to make those names sounds right, sometimes, rolling the sounds over and over on your tongue, playing with echoes of the names of real places and things so that they are neither too similar or too different, so they feel right. The World Tree species name "Orren" evaded us for a while, like the people it describes. The name "Sleeth" was extremely obvious from the start, somehow. And "Khtsoyis", though it has the right rough sound, was perhaps a poor choice, in retrospect; people have a lot of trouble pronouncing it, somehow ending up with "ketosis" instead, and even I have trouble spelling it most of the time.

You can call me whatever you like. Just be sure to tap me on the shoulder if I don't answer.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: The Name Game (vicki vicki bo bicki)

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From:

koogrr.livejournal.com

Naming something allows one to put it in a box. Once something is in a box, it can be put away so it doesn't have to be thought about anymore. Oh, that's X and all the magic and mystery goes away out of it.

I hate trying to come up with good names in stories. I have a hard enough time coming up with names for characters. Perhaps that is why I like "Sasta" so much, it's a tangible example of the universe saying "Here, you seem to be having a hard time, take this."

For nodding off in during stories, just tell people you have Narcolepsy. NARCO not Necro, that's um... worse.

From:

lediva.livejournal.com

Perhaps that is why I like "Sasta" so much, it's a tangible example of the universe saying "Here, you seem to be having a hard time, take this."

I've experienced that. I've had a couple times now where I've intentionally sat down to come up with a pseudonym for myself. Each time, I wrote down all the names I could think of that I'd used to that point. The next one would usually pop out from there. It's how I got "LeDiva". :)

And as long as I'm babbling about names... LeDiva really is spelled with an E. This has nothing to do with French pronouns, it's just how the name is spelled and pronounced. It's my name, I get to decide how it's spelled, durnitall. [Pet peeve mode OFF]

From:

chipuni.livejournal.com

I've taken on a few dozen 'legal' names -- mostly due to travel. From 'Lalo Gonzalez' to 'Erik Vivipoeg' to 'Karl Einhorn', depending on where I am. [My real first name, Brent, for whatever reason is hard for most other cultures to remember or say.] They all tend to evolve, when I'm staying in a place for a while.

And, you know what? My personality shifts depending on the name that I'm using. Sometimes fairly radically. I was joking with Mexico's Minister of Tourism as Lalo; Karl was more studious.

H. P. Lovecraft knew the power of names, as well... putting off naming his creations as long as possible. He knows the power that names have over people.

From:

shaterri.livejournal.com

Naming something allows one to put it in a box. Once something is in a box, it can be put away so it doesn't have to be thought about anymore. Oh, that's X and all the magic and mystery goes away out of it.

This is true to some extent, and it's often a problem; it's where stereotypes and biases come from, for instance. Naming things too discretely, rather than giving oneself the continuum of information that real people (and things) often possess.

On the othe rhand, there's something to be said for it in some circumstances too. There's only so much thinking that can really be done in any given length of time, after all, and naming things and thus being able to shunt them allows for that time to be spent on things that might be more worthy of extended consideration. It's all a matter of where you think it's most important to spend your effort and, of course, how much effort one has available to spend in the first place.

From:

shaterri.livejournal.com

The naming process is one of the most underrated parts of creation. Giving something the right name acts as a shortcut to a sense of personality and character, whether you're naming a species or a place or an individual -- or even an idea, sometimes. I think that Khtsoyis is a perfect name for them; it has a certain... awkwardness to it that suits their concept well.

I'm always impressed at how much difference the right name makes when I create characters; it's gotten to the point that I can't play someone withuot a really good name for them first. They strike me from totally random places, too, or so it seems. Aquinas was named after the saint, although the name felt like anything but to me -- it perfectly fit the large, confident tiger it was attached to. Kyokugei, the dz'isu I had for a while, quite simply borrowed his name from the Japanese for 'gymnast' or 'acrobat'. Shari (a southern skunk waitress I had) was originally a contraction of sorts of Shaterri; but I believe it must've been more than luck that it also turned out to be the name of a chain of Denny's-style restaurants in the northwest. I was playing around with the prospect of a gendershifting cougar technomage and I was really fond of the name 'Chiral' (perhaps 'Chiralle' for the female side), but nobody else who I mentioned it to really liked it, and it fell by the wayside over time. It didn't go totally wasted, though, because that character slot wound up being taken over by my silkie, Sabayon; originally he was meant to be Caramel, an even more perfect name... but one that was unfortunately taken on Furry and Tapestries both. It took me weeks to come up with a proper backup, and then finally that hit me out of the blue. I still like Bechamel (the backup name I had) and expect that to show up sooner or later, but the character will need to be distinguished a little better first. And so it goes, and so it goes...

...oh, and parts of Shaterri's full name actually came out of a random text generator. Strange, but true.

From: (Anonymous)

i feel an oddity. i may be one of the few whose given name fit them so well i never felt the need to seriously challenge it, once i got past all the "herman munster" jokes.

that's one of the reasons that when it came time to choose a screen name, i merely flipped it: giving myself the liberty to be a bad-ass verison of me, but still me.

funny you should bring this up today. one of the books i reccomended yersterday has a firm grounding in this topic of true names and essences, The Iron Dragon's Daughter.

sirhc/chris, whose full given name roughly translates to "sworn warrior-queen of Christ" - how's that for a heavy load?

From:

mike-kenshin.livejournal.com

Personally, I've never been good with names. Either remembering them or coming up with them (which is why my WorldTree characters' names are usually direct translations of professions from Manx Gaelic).

But here's me:
Michael - Hebrew name meaning "who is like God?". The archangel Michael is considered the patron saint of soldiers.

Brad - Old English name meaning "broad".

Schlosser - German name meaning Castellan (caretaker of a castle).

Given this analysis - I think I'm filling the requisites of my name nicely (not sure what to make of broad - but over the last few years, I've been filling into that description too. ;)

I'll also recommend a few Kaballah books to your "to read" list, having mentioned the tetragrammaton.

From:

koogrr.livejournal.com

I got Sasta from a random password generator. It could just as easily have been 1hj48fh.

Stunned shock Well I didn't know you had all those characters. I think maybe seeing one or two of them on occasion. Did you talk to me about Chiral/Chiralle? I like the idea of a gender shifting technomage. *purr* I think you did, something to do with marbels? Hmm, I might not have liked it at the time, fickle mind. Caramel is better than Sabayon, as it reminds me of Sabalon Glitz (Dr. Who's version of Harry Mudd).

I had a very hard time deciding what name to use on my journal, since

sasta got my 'traditional' one. Koogrr was something Lynx started calling me in Sinai, inspired by the Krugars from the Jorune video game. I think the Icon nailed the personality I wanted better though. Still, names do seem rather important for establishing an image.

From:

awolf.livejournal.com

I still stress over my legal name. I want it to be (first name deleted for security reasons) Trixie Wolf, but I'm afraid because of the first name, people will call me Anna by preference. This would quickly become psychologically confusing for me, even though Anna doesn't seem to mind the idea. I think she knows something I don't.

Another bit of Trixie trivia that only you'll likely get to read, Bee. My name in Primal is closest to kuh-ching-sir, which sounds unnervingly like the "chu-ching" of a cash register (unnerving because I don't like money all that much). It literally means "Illusionist", which I rather like. But what most people don't know is that I had another name in Primal that my friends gave me, that I assumed meant "Trickster" and used as my name... Until I published the book and realized it didn't mean Trickster at all. I signed several pieces of artwork with that older Primal name, a couple of years back. It's pronounced "king-soy".

Suffice to say, the two root words that my previous appelation is composed of do not appear in the Primal dictionary, for personal reasons.

Trickster