What's in a Name?

By Otto Friedrich

Pick up an old novel by one of the Russian masters or a new memoir by a Soviet dissident and notice how people introduce themselves -- last names first. "Good day, I am Scriabin, Alexander Nikolayevich." Notice too how often, perhaps in rebellion against those cumbrous Russian patronymics, they use only their initials. "Good day, I am Scriabin, A.N." The title of a French movie made a few years back, Lacombe, Lucien, was apparently intended to show how the German Occupation had bureaucratized and dehumanized the susceptible French. But the Russians do not have their reversed names imposed on them; they seem to reverse them freely on their own. Perhaps that is always the way with dehumanization; we willingly do it to ourselves.

There is some deeply mystical power in the names we give things and in the process of naming. God's first act after saying, "Let there be light" was to "call the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." One of his first acts after creating Adam was to bring every beast of the field so that Adam could give them names, "and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof."

One of the most pleasant avocations of pregnancy -- and one of the earliest assertions of parental power -- is deciding on the baby's name. The discussions sometimes go on until after the baby is born, when it becomes clear, for example, that the little girl should not be called Howard. Occasionally, of course, the father's (or mother's) yearning for a son is so intense that the girl is called Howard anyway. Some nations feel obliged to intervene against such eccentricities. In France, it is illegal to give any child a name that is not already held by a saint (or a "well-known figure in ancient history"), who presumably would watch over the protege. The courts specifically forbade one couple to name their child Cerise (Cherry). In the U.S., by contrast, the Navy once got applications from half a dozen brothers who all bore names like Measles Jones and Pneumonia Jones and whatever other ills had afflicted the family at the time of their births.

We can only guess at the psychological effects of names (What happens when that girl Howard reaches an age to be interested in other Howards?), but it seems reasonable to suggest that a boy named John will grow up differently from one named Cuthbert. He is less likely to be beaten up by his schoolmates, for one thing. Fashions change, though, as Gertrude gives way to Marilyn, and Marilyn to Debbie; a name that would have seemed weird a generation ago, like Kimberly, becomes a cliche.

Some names have a special kind of imprint. The famous Miss Hogg, whose father cruelly named her Ima, had good reason to grow up scowling, but maybe she would have even if she had been named something sweet, like Charlotte. Anyone named James Oliver Buswell IV carries his parents' announcement of a certain view of the child's place in the world, but the effect of such a view probably differs considerably from one person to another. Someone with a name like Otto inevitably knows the burdens of an ethnic heritage, but so, presumably, do Madonna Ciccone and Fernando Valenzuela, and we all survive.

Travel broadens the horizons. A glance at a Berlin telephone book reveals Ottos everywhere, but hardly any Kimberlys. Evelyn Waugh periodically had to reassure Americans that he was not a woman and that Evelyn was quite a common name for boys in England. Or as Peter Lorre whined in Beat the Devil, "In Chile the name of O'Hara is . . . a tip-top name. Many Germans in Chile have come to be called O'Hara."

Just as naming a child is one of the first assertions of parental power, so one of the first attempts at teenage rebellion is announcing that one is changing one's name (and thus, theoretically, one's identity). One now wishes to be addressed not as Bobby but as Hercules, or vice versa. Susan Weaver, for example, announced at 14 that she was henceforth Sigourney, a name that impressed her as "long and curvy, with a musical ring." For those apprehensive about anything so drastic, there is the face-lifting change in spelling: Debbie now wishes to be Debi, or Debbey.

The most impressive of these semichanges is the alteration of a first name to an initial. This is often thought to be a means of suppressing some supposedly sissified first name. (Would Parkinson's law ever have been discovered if C. Northcote Parkinson had remained Cyril N. Parkinson?) More commonly, such changes suppress a plain name. (Could Bill Harriman have served Presidents as grandly as W. Averell Harriman did? Would the FBI have achieved the same renown under Jack Hoover as it did under J. Edgar Hoover?)

Even after we come to accept the names imposed on us, or acquire ones we like, we still have some difficulty in agreeing on what to call one another. In England it is considered very proper and Oxbridgian to address a man simply by his last name. Most Americans call one another by their first names, even if they have just met. Except in Anglophile circles, many consider it standoffish, if not rude, to address a fellow worker as Mr. Jones. On the other hand, a fair number of people still dislike being patted on the shoulder and called Harry by someone who is trying to sell something. Women, in particular, object to being addressed as Susan by a doctor who would look startled at being called Jack. There are no doubt millions of people, notably in-laws, who have never succeeded in figuring out what to call one another at all.

One of the oddest aspects of the name game is the spreading practice of not identifying oneself on the telephone. It started a few years ago as a kind of compliment: it meant that you and your caller were good friends, and it made perfect sense if you talked with somebody a lot. But as the practice has grown, it has become more of a test: you are not only supposed to know the voice that you may not have heard for a month but to know it immediately. Any hesitation is apt to lead to a pained, "You don't even recognize me." One has to develop strategies. Thus:

Essayist: Hello?

Mysterious voice: Hi.

Essayist: Uh -- where are you calling from? or Well, what's new with you? or How're things? or some other bid for clues and cues. The one unforgivable thing to say is the obvious one: Who is this, please?

In most of our nightmares about the future, the dehumanized citizens will be given numbers instead of names, as traditionally happens in prison, as though a number were somehow less human than a name. Perhaps it would be more effective to persuade everyone to stop using names at all. Then everybody would have the same name: Hi.