What’s in a Name?
I am fascinated by names. Just the other day, I was delighted to meet a woman named Popy. When I told her I liked to find unusual names, she told me, “You wouldn’t believe how many Popys there are.” The fact is, I can’t believe it. Apparently, I don’t know what I am looking for or I define unusual differently.
Giving characters names explains one reason for my interest. For a while, I knew a friendly younger man named Rustin. Knowing he liked science fiction, I asked if I could use his name for a character in Crossing Xavier. If he ever read the copy I gave him, he would have found that the Rustin in the novel is an officious bureaucrat trying to make a name (hah) for himself. At least he can never say I based the character after him.
Someone once noted that spoken language does not fossilize. It is impossible to identify when humans started to use names for themselves and each other. One theory suggests Stone Age folks used descriptions of the physical characteristics of others when speaking about them. The guy with red hair and thin legs. The female with her front teeth missing. Get the picture? That also suggests gossip has been around a long while. Otherwise, why would they be talking about someone not present?
Humans likely were using names when they stopped hunting and gathering and settled in communities about 12–14,000 years ago. The first recorded name found so far dates a millennium after writing was adopted. How archaeologists figure this out is above my pay grade. I hold a special place in my cesspool of useless knowledge for Enheduanna, the earliest known writer to fix her name to her writing. She lived 2285–2250 BCE. Someday I will complete the novel that begins with her story.
Before her time, the Chinese had adopted family names, possibly the first to do so. Indications are that was done for governments to keep track of people to organize them for corvée labor. Only about 12,000 surnames have been used in China ever. One study says 6,150 at most are in use now. The generally accepted figure is 3,100. It is estimated that only 100 surnames are used by about 85% of all Han Chinese people and 96% use the 200 most popular. Some surnames only exist in a single village. Han by the way is the Chinese name for ethnically Chinese people. China has 55 non-Han ethnic groups, some of which (Tibetans and Uighurs particularly) have been the target of severe repression for seeking greater autonomy.
One Chinese surname is dying out because the character for it isn’t included in the character set in computer software. Family members have begun using a different character already in use as a family name. Sounds like the situation with my birth/passport surname. Only one great grandson of the man given our name by immigration authorities has male offspring. It’s not as devastating as the extinction of a species or language but belongs to the same category of loss.
Aside from the Romans, who could have three names, most people at the western end of Eurasia used one name, sometimes adding the name of where they came from, or an epithet related to a distinctive characteristic. Sweyn Forkbeard comes to mind, a Viking who was King of England from December 25, 1013, to February 3, 1014. His son Cnut left a greater legacy, which is why he is Cnut the Great. Only in the last centuries of the Middle Ages do we find family names widely used. Even then, some names adopted related to a patriarch’s place of birth. Irving Berlin is an example. I have a friend whose surname is England. Other sources were the patriarch’s profession, such as Smith or Cooper, or his name followed by -son, as in Johnson, or begun with the Scottish Mac-, as in MacDonald.
Using patronyms like those examples began as a way of identifying who the child’s father was. They remain common among Russians and Arabs, although Russians added family names in the Modern Era. The people of Iceland maintain the tradition carried from Scandinavia of using a patronymic or sometimes matronymic as the last name. Iceland’s citizens subject themselves to a Naming Commission that has the job of approving children’s names for use, fining parents who use unapproved names or fail to name their child within six months of birth. The goal is to preserve Icelandic culture, something rather important for a country whose population was 344,528 as of Monday, December 27, 2021.
That sounds like the naming law we created for Xavier Colony in Crossing Xavier, where parents must choose a single name for their child that has never been used in the colony. The requirement of a unique name ensures that anyone, including the government, can identify someone by name only, without relying on a Social Security Number or such. Being a utopia, however, no one has privacy concerns. Ironically, it is the other, dystopian colony on Planet Xavier, where people use given and family names that the government keeps track of everything residents do. The idea of a unique name came from my situation, where I am the only person on this planet with both names I use.
Since I am referring to my previous essay on names, there is one thing to add there. A reader referred to my name Bear as a pseudonym. I try to stay precise in my use of words. A pseudonym means a “false name” used to maintain anonymity for a specific purpose. Bear has been my nickname for 43 years. A nickname is a name given as a term of affection or endearment. Nickname and pseudonym are not synonymous. By publicly associating my birth/passport name with my chosen name, I am not trying to remain anonymous. Hugh Dudley, author of Crossing Xavier, fits the description of a pseudonym better.