The Game of the Name

By Frank Trippett

"Giving a name," Thomas Carlyle once said, "is a poetic art." Perhaps, but it can also be a trying one. Item: Retreating before the distemper of feminists who do not like all hurricanes to bear women's names, Government meteorologists this year will christen storms not only Aletta but Bud and Daniel and Fico. Item: A national chain, Sambo's Restaurants, has run into stern resistance in New England, where civil rights groups are trying to ban the name because of allegedly racist overtones. Item: A young man who asked a Minnesota court to change his name to "1069" was recently refused and rebuked by the judge for proposing "an offense to human dignity" and seeking a name that was "inherently totalitarian." Strong language.

Strong feelings and forensics to match are commonplace when names are at stake--and they seem to be at stake all the time and all over the place in the U.S. The necessity of naming 3 million babies a year is only one source of nameless stress. Americans continually leap into flaps and furors over the naming and renaming of things and places. It amounts to a national obsession, or craze, or fascination, or mania--name it what you will--and it seems to be getting livelier all the time.

The name game is also growing ever more trendy and even desperate as more and more people clamor for attention in a please-notice-me society. It is merely ironic that businesses with names like the No Name Bar and The Chocolate Soup (a children's clothes store) now so proliferate that only an innocent would suffer a double take on learning that an orchestra called The Widespread Depression happened to be performing last week at a nightspot called The Other End. That is in Greenwich Village, where some runners trade at a store called The Athlete's Foot.

It is not easy to diagnose such nominal absurdity, but plainly it is epidemic. Already the name thing has inspired the publication of whole books that purport to plumb the "psychological vibrations" of personal names. Dawn and Loretta and Candy are supposed to be sexy, according to Christopher Andersen's The Name Game, and Bart and Mac and Nate are macho. Humphrey is sedentary; so much for Bogart. Anyway Americans have not needed any tracts or theories to get them lunging after catchy handles. One Phoenix mother recently branded her new baby girl with the unforgettable sobriquet Equal Rights Amendment.

The game is ubiquitous. Corporations strain to invent short, arcane names. Married women have begun to resist taking their husbands' surnames. Cassius Clay becomes Muhammad Ali in midcareer. Sambo is a target of only one minority; Italians hate the name Mafia. Rock groups, such as Jefferson Starship (ne Airplane) and the Grateful Dead, have stretched the art of naming to surreal heights and depths. The President's wish to stick to Jimmy as his official name perhaps ingratiated him more with the public than any other step he has taken--and may, in the end, have hinted more than he intended at his fuzzy grasp of presidential power.

But what, in the name of heaven, is behind so much fuss over a matter as superficial as names--mere words, mere sounds, mere labels? Names are loved and hated as though they were animate. Kids may still be taught that only sticks and stones break bones, but grown-ups behave as though names are powerful agents for good or ill. In the adult world, name-calling is considered the dirtiest form of fight. Elaborate libel laws rest on the premise that a name can do real damage. Individuals clearly expect a variety of benefits when they take on new names. For Ellen Cooperman, becoming Ellen Cooperperson was ostensibly indispensable to her liberation. When he planned to run for Governor, Maryland Attorney General Francis Boucher Burch, long called "Bill," legally adopted the nickname with its suggestion of a common touch--but reverted to Francis Boucher after he withdrew from the race. Out of a simple wish to escape the paternal shadow, Graham Williams Wheeler, the son of Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Charles B. Wheeler Jr., recently had his name legally pruned back to Graham Williams.

Even impersonal names stir improbable emotions. Phone clients have continued to howl as Ma Bell has systematically abolished exchange names (Butterfield, Murray Hill) in favor of numbers. When a disease got named for their organization, some American Legionnaires protested as though fearing voodoo-like contamination. Real estate developers act as if they expect fanciful street names to impart class to entire neighborhoods. But should it be assumed that only classical music is played on Symphony Circle in Vienna, Va.?

People act, in short, as though names do possess strange power. Indeed, some names act as though they have the upper hand, sometimes persisting against all efforts at eradication. Cape Canaveral stuck where it was put long ago in spite of efforts to displace it with the chimerical name of Kennedy. Sixth Avenue remains just that to many New Yorkers in spite of diligent efforts to promote the general use of the 33-year-old legal name, Avenue of the Americas. Mount McKinley is still not generally accepted by Alaskans, who tend to prefer the peak's original designation, Denali.

Such cases suggest that a name is not a passive label. Some names, weirdly enough, manage to penetrate to the core of the named, achieving a profound fusion, becoming inextricable. Certain names become so incorporated with the acts or traits or destinies of their owners that they pop into the popular vocabulary as common nouns and adjectives: Cain, Jeremiah, Job (the Bible is a storehouse of such), Machiavelli, De Sade, McCarthy. The same peculiar joining of character and name occurs all the time, even in the fictive world. Romeo is as inseparable from the youth so named as he was from Juliet, and no actress could credibly play the role of Desdemona if the character's name were changed to, say, Sally. Some names veritably become the named, or vice versa--which is why everybody so naturally speaks of celebrated persons as "big names."

Many snatches of American vernacular rise out of an implied belief in the mystical properties of names. To say that someone's "name is mud" is figuratively to eradicate the owner. An American speaking of the crux or essence of any pursuit will probably say "That's the name of the game." Obviously, James Russell Lowell was onto something when he wrote that "there is more force in names than most men dream of. . ."

People in earlier civilizations and some primitive tribes up to modern times did dream--and believe--that personal names held mortal power. In The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer tells how the ancient Egyptians and aboriginal Australians alike took pains to protect their secret true names--and the vital power they contained--from falling into the possession of outsiders. Aging Eskimos, Frazer also records, sometimes take new names in the belief they thus get a fresh start in life. Such superstitions have waned in today's civilizations. Still, as Noah Jacobs points out in Naming-Day in Eden, people "have not altogether discarded the belief in the virtue of names."

Actually, the potency of names is recognized more clearly and used more craftily than ever in this age of advertising. Name recognition is accepted as vital by both politicians and businesses. Ohio's ex-Congressman Wayne Hays, unsavory reputation and all, recently won a state legislative primary largely because of name recognition. Companies now calling themselves Equifax and Standex want to plant themselves in the public mind, while signaling that they are in tune with the technotronic times. And hucksters have long relied on the power of a clever name to sway a customer's decision. The popularity of Cheer and All among detergents, and Mustang and Diplomat among autos, is no more due to the properties of the merchandise than the box-office power of a John Wayne movie is usually owed to artistic excellence. The hottest new perfume, now U.S.-bound from Paris, is called Opium. No telling how the doomed Edsel might have done if it had been dubbed, say, the Frolic.

The name game, though epidemic, will probably do no serious harm unless it at last hypnotizes everybody into forgetting that substance remains vitally important. Already, far too many things that reach the American market under beguiling names turn out, on close inspection, to be turkeys and lemons. Frank Trippett

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.