Have you ever realized that things don’t exist until they are named?
Notes on names
These are my notes on names. I have accumulated them over the last one year as posts on Facebook.
I have been compiling them here for my own convenience in retrieval/reference.
Introductory Statements
The first thing a scientist does when he makes a discovery is name it.
The first thing a slaver does is give his new slaves new names.
The first task God gave Adam was to name the animals.
Black Americans blackanize their names for a reason (dignity of a self-picked name).
Africans dropping their white names to decolonize.
We Need New Names is an aptly named book.
Names as tools of control, even violence.
A nickname is a tool of violence: attack or defense.
Attack: a bully gives his victims nicknames to humiliate.
Defense: a victim gives his bully a nickname to ridicule him secretly. In school, nicknaming the teachers.
Also: nicknames as terms of endearment. Lovers calling each other “sweet potato”. Buddies calling each other “champ”. Men calling each other “kiongozi”.
Naming is the Beginning of Owning.
Slaves were given names by their masters. Conquered cities or countries were given names by their conquerors. An Egyptian city became “Alexandria” because it was conquered by Alexander the Great (a Greek).
African countries were given their names by their colonizers. How some of these countries reasserted their sovereignty after independence was to unshackle themselves from the colonial name. Northern and Southern Rhodesia became Zambia and Zimbabwe respectively.
When Thomas Sankara took over Upper Volta, he changed the name of the country to Burkina Faso: “The Land of Upright Men.”
Names are about power.
Names are about ownership.
Names are about sovereignty.
I wonder if part of the thrill of “discovering” places around the world for the Europeans was it gave them the right to name those places.
Names, Like Songs, Trap Memories (and Emotions)
Gertrude Stein told about how she received American soldiers who were in France during World War II. She had not been to America for many years and the thing she was most interested in was hearing the names of the places where these young American soldiers came from. Names like Omaha, Chicago, St. Louis, Mississippi ... Hearing all these names thrilled her intensely.
For an exile, the names of home are a connection to home. Sometimes the only connection.
When you have been away from a place for a long time, a place that holds an emotional connection for you, all it takes to return to that place is someone mentioning an obscure name from that place and suddenly you are descending into Proustian labyrinths of memory.
Also: a person you haven’t seen in years. Someone mentions that person’s name (or you read it somewhere) and you are suddenly time-traveling to the past, to when you knew that person.
Things Don’t Exist Until They Are Named
Have you ever realized that things don’t exist for you until they are named?
Like a woman will be simply opinionated until you say she’s a feminist. That changes everything. The name/word comes with a myriad associations and they are now in your mind when you think of her.
Someone is a freedom fighter until CNN calls them a terrorist. And that changes everything about how you view them and their situation.
A teacher was killed earlier this year. The circumstances of her death were bizarre. Then somebody called it “femicide” and that changed everything. A whole new debate arouse from the new name/word. It was no longer a murder: it was femicide, and that roped in feminism and gender battles into public discussion of the case.
Things don’t really exist until you name them.
She and I were alright until she insisted we “define the relationship”. Are we “dating” or are we “friends with benefits”, she asked. Our relationship didn’t really exist until we named it. We had a relationship, but it was not really a relationship. After naming/defining what was between us, it became a relationship. With the definition came certain rules and laws associated with that definition.
Things don’t really exist until you name them.
Names and Terminologies: Canisters of Knowledge
Names and terminologies represent knowledge. Things don’t exist to us until we know them.
For instance, I’m attractive to her until she asks what I do for a living. If the career doesn’t sound attractive, I cease to be attractive. Knowledge killed the attraction.
This guy said he is a mixologist. I asked like a DJ or something? No, he said, mixing drinks, like cocktails. Naturally I asked him a series of questions to find out what a day at the office looks like for a mixologist. It was fascinating stuff. I was particularly fascinated by the names of the drinks: Margarita, Mojito, Martini, Manhattan, Whisky Sour, Long Isand, Dawa, Gin and Tonic, Negroni, White Russian, Daquiri …
I discovered that one of the things that makes a career sound fascinating is the number of unfamiliar terms it contains. Or familiar terms that are mysterious.
In school cramming terminologies and their definitions.
In an interview spouting jargon to impress the interviewer.
The more names you know, the more knowledge you (appear to) have.
Names, Ownership, and Learning
Names are about ownership.
What you name, you own. If not physically, then psychologically.
Names are about learning. To learn and understand is to own the knowledge you have acquired. But to learn, you must first know all the relevant names/terminologies.
To solve a problem, you have to define the problem. To define the problem, you have to name the problem. Once you have the name for it, you can do research on the problem using the name. If you don’t have the right name, you won’t get the right solution: because you won’t do the right research.
Africans as consumers of knowledge rather than creators: our education system is imported, and all the names/terminologies we learn are imported.
Innovators and discoverers create new knowledge. Everything they invent or discover must have a name, and it is one of the privileges of innovators and discoverers to provide those names. African nations as consumers of the knowledge innovated, discovered, and named elsewhere.
I wonder if part of the thrill of “discovering” places around the world for the Europeans was it gave them the right to name those places.
How Meaning is Encoded in Words and Names
He was massacred.
He was slaughtered.
He was killed.
He was murdered.
He was butchered.
It was a homicide.
Observe the emotions (separately) that arise when you read each of these words:
massacre
slaughter
kill
murder
homicide
Each word brings its own associations. The man was killed, but the intensity of that event is within your imagination. And that imagination will be triggered by the word the writer picks.
As a writer, picking words is the art of figuring out which word will bring up the most appropriate associations (memory, emotions, psychological).
Synonyms are not really synonyms because each word conjures different associations from the other, and that means each word produces a different emotional meaning.
A name embodies meaning. Multiple meanings jostle for primacy. Mufasa is a Disney Lion; but in Kenya, Mufasa is a spoken word poet. The lion and the poet in a tussle: who will most embody the name Mufasa? I posed this question to my Facebook audience and observed that for many people the poet has successfully usurped the lion king’s throne.
