for Nicole
Names are powerful things. They act as an identity marker and a kind of map, locating you in time and geography. More than that, they can be a compass. –Nicola Yoon, The Sun is Also a Star
I’ve always had a thing for names. I first became aware of this as I surveyed my new box of 64 Crayola crayons. What a smorgasbord of names, a veritable feast for name-afficianados like me! Periwinkle, aquamarine, salmon, maize, emerald, fuschia, raw umber, orchid, tangerine, cerulean! As I pulled each crayon from the three-tiered box, I marveled at how its name was a perfect identity marker. To become a crayon namer, to examine the 64 perfectly pointed crayons and christen them with perfectly chosen names! Be still my heart! In time, I sorted and moved my favorite crayons to the top tier, vowing to keep their points for as long as I could resist using them. Even at 8, I felt something magical in these names. In late July when I see the aisles of school supplies begin to emerge, I still make a pass through the crayon section. As I stand in front of these big box crayons with new and spectacular names (macaroni and cheese, banana mania, Granny Smith apple, wild blue yonder, jazzberry jam, and timberwolf) I’m grounded in the time and geography of childhood. A name can do this: provide a kind of map to particular moments and memories.
British poet W. H. Auden claims that “[p]roper names are poetry in the raw.” I became school-age in the 60s when a name like Shannon was relatively exotic in a field saturated with Debbies and Julies. And I loved this. I loved that my name was unusual, that it sounded like a poem to my ears. When I began considering names for my own children, I spoke them aloud often, trying them on, listening to how the first, middle, and last names worked together. I rejected many combinations as being too flat. I wanted something musical and memorable. And I wanted my children to love their names as I loved mine. Above all, I wanted them to know that their naming had been a sacred act, for “[a] good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.” (Proverbs 22:1).
So, what if you aren’t blessed with a beautiful name? What if your name is common or odd? What if the very sound of it–its combination of consonants and vowels–jars the senses? In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Good Country People,” the protagonist’s mother refuses to call her daughter by the name she’d chosen for herself. O’ Connor writes: “When Mrs. Hopewell thought the name, Hulga, she thought of the broad blank hull of a battleship. She would not use it.” Although I’m certain there are worse fates, a name that evokes the broad blank hull of a battleship must come with a unique set of challenges.
Children’s novelist Katherine Patterson writes: “The name we give to something shapes our attitude to it.” I often shudder when I hear the names that some parents have consciously–or unconsciously–given their children. My dad told the story of a brother and sister in his hometown whose names sadly shaped others’ attitudes towards them. What were their parents thinking when they named their children Harry and Rosie Rump? Consider, too, the name of my former student, Kinda Short. When I called roll on the first day of class, I hoped that my pronunciation of “Kinda” with a short i was accurate. But she corrected me quickly. It was “Kinda” with a long i. And tragically, she was kind of short. As I was chatting with a group of students before class one night, a young woman announced that her brother and his wife just had their first baby, a girl. “What’s her name?” I asked. She shrugged and said, “They’re still deciding. But they’re considering Twin Towers.” Twin Towers? Did I hear her right? This was a name straight out of the Frank Zappa playbook (remember Moon Unit and Dweezil?) In his short story, “The Scarlet Ibis,” James Hurst writes: “Renaming my brother was perhaps the kindest thing I ever did for him, because nobody expects much from someone called Doodle.” If this poor girl was to be saddled with a name like Twin Towers, I wanted the power to rename her, so that she might escape the legacy of terror and grief associated with her name. Renaming her would be, at the very least, an act of kindness. At best, it might save her life.
In L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Avonlea, we read a conversation in which Diana, Anne’s good friend, proposes a possible solution for an unfortunate name:
“That’s a lovely idea, Diana,” said Anne enthusiastically. “Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn’t beautiful to begin with… making it stand in people’s thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself.”
To beautify one’s name, to make it memorable as something lovely and pleasant is a lovely thought. Like O’Connor’s fictional character, Hulga, my maternal grandfather, Wilbert Zorn, had a name that sounded like the broad blank hull of a battleship. He lived such a wonderful life, however, that he beautified it, softening its hard edges with sunny days spent on the banks of sandpits, a bucket of crawdads and a whole lot of love between us.
Recently, I commented on Nebraska photographer and blogger (Sandhills Prairie Girl), Nicole Louden’s post, confessing how much I love how she names things that populate the Sandhills. Naming things, I wrote, is a divine act, for it calls them into the significance they merit. Confucius argues that “[i]f names are not correct, language will not be in accordance with the truth of things.” Nicole’s pratice of using correct names for the things about which she writes and photographs endows her work with a truthfulness and a profound sense of place: not plant but “soapweed,” not wildflower but “pucoon,” not shore bird but “phalarope,” not moth but “cecropia moth.” How well she uses the power and the majesty of particular names!
And speaking of particular names, my favorites are the names of my grandchildren, Gracyn Mae and Griffin Jay. Though they are 11 and 14 now, I can’t say their names without remembering their births, their name days. When I say their names, I can feel the sweet weight of their infant bodies in my arms. I can hear the giggles of sleepovers, and I can see them sitting companionably on the dock at the end of a summer’s day. I want to speak their names, proclaiming, “Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name” (Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn). Melodramatic, maybe, but nontheless true.
In the past few years, I’ve begun to lament my inability to remember names. Often as soon as I hear a name in an introduction, it floats away like chaff in the wind. I hate this. For I know that naming is ultimately an intimate act of knowing and blessing. I want to be able to say “wild chicory” to distinguish it from other roadside plants. I want to be able to say, “Hi, Laura” to distinguish my friend from other women. In the sanctuary of naming, I take solace in the unmerited grace for those, like me, who occasionally forget. And when I can’t recall the name “periwinkle,” I take solace in the fact that, with patience, I’ll be able to retrieve this name eventually. For a name is a powerful thing, and no self-respecting periwinkle would answer to “blue”.
