What’s in a name?

‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world’ – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Inasmuch as language preserves and gives life, the first part of this article will argue that there is some substance to the position that language, but specifically the act of naming, takes away as well as it gives. The second part of this article will posit the power of a name, and the underrated importance of the naming process.

Indeed, as Hegel puts it, whenever we name a thing, the named thing loses its singularity and becomes subsumed under a universal concept. This process negates the individual character of a thing.

On its face, the act of naming something seems to be a clear process vesting that thing with life. Naming something a ‘hammer’ or ‘cat’, or naming a baby ‘Jeff’ allows these things to be remembered and communicated about, giving them lives in thought and language. However, for Hegel, to name a thing is to ‘nullif[y it] as a being on its own account’.

Hegel considers this thesis through the narration in the Biblical Genesis of how living creatures came to be named: Adam was vested with the powers of nomenclature – ‘whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof’.

Adam’s naming of the animals, for Hegel, was ‘not merely an act of categorization but of domination, of control. For it abolishes their independent existence, their being as “natural” signs, their status as things. And it recreates them as ideas in the mind… once the name is created, once the act of naming is accomplished, the name itself now persists, as something concrete, as something that might outlive its creator and indeed the very thing it named.’

If I name my child Jeff, for instance, my child becomes categorisable into a class of ‘Jeffs’ and the act of naming thus ‘killeth’ individuality, just as naming something a ‘hammer’ or ‘cat’ renders these things into particular classes of ‘hammers’ and ‘cats’. The individual becomes a part of a sign type, rather than remaining a thing in itself: ‘[w]hen we use something as a sign, we abstract from its existence as a thing.’ Naming things gives those things life in the medium of language by giving them a representable sign, yet this process also precludes singularity by subsuming these things into universal classes of things. Thus, the name takes away from the thing itself, and the written name perpetuates this separation by acting as a permanent marker.

‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet’ – Juliet, Act II, Scene II, Romeo and Juliet.

However, against this backdrop, being intentional about naming can vest a thing with all the benefits that come with individuality. Nominative determinism, the theory that names act as a self-fulfilling prophecy, has often been considered as a joke (see this thread, citing an eye doctor named Dr. Seawright, a Reverend named Mary Blessing, et al), however I argue there is some truth to it.

Want to be better than you are? Try 2XU. Want to be the best 100m runner in history? Have the last name ‘Bolt’.

Naming a thing, where that thing is not part of a type, has the capacity to shape the narrative of that singular thing. The limits of our language might mean the limits of our world, but that means we have the power to expand our world through novel language in the act of naming.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – that the language accessible to us influences our thought and cognition – is relevant here. Phrases like ‘climate change’ and ‘Artificial Intelligence’ frame our thinking and a world in a new way, just as the Australian Indigenous language of Guugu Ymithirr frames its speakers to think in cardinal terms (north, east, south, west) instead of up, down, left, right.

The idiosyncrasies of our particular language can also shape our feelings – the Portuguese have a word (‘saudade’) for the bittersweet longing for an absent person/thing, and the German have a word (‘schadenfreude’) for pleasure at another’s misfortune. German and Portuguese speakers have linguistic access to the acknowledgment and understanding of an emotion other language speakers cannot easily articulate. Words like these help to order our own inner lives: my capacity to understand that I am ‘sad’ or ‘happy’ helps me act accordingly.

In that vein, the way we refer to ourselves animates our personality and gives us vitality as an authentic, living, organism – to call ourselves a ‘hard worker’ or ‘shy’ or ‘bubbly’ grants us an active way of relating to the world around us. Indeed, the linguistic capacity to refer to ourselves in the first person arguably shapes the way we navigate our lives. As the subject, we become a life that can be told and cohesively structured as an intelligible narrative. Language thus gives us life: it allows our experience to be made sense of and communicated in ways that are translatable to other minds, such that an otherwise unintelligible stream of impressions becomes an ordered story. Giving names to ourselves and to things associated with us becomes our own North Star in wayfinding our way through a changing world.

Thus, there is a lot in a name. It can reduce a singular thing to a universal type, and yet it can empower a thing with certain qualities, and can shape the way we view the world.