Author Archives: Brent
Naming Names: J.K. Rowling On Naming
I’ve always ‘collected’ – that’s to say, remembered – unusual names and finally found a use for them! I love names; sad to say, I really enjoy reading lists of them, for me it’s like casting an eye over a pile of unwrapped presents, each of the names representing a whole person. War memorials, telephone directories, shop fronts, saints, villains, baby-naming books – you name it, I’ve got names from it! I also make up names, the most popular one being ‘quidditch’, of course.
J.K. Rowling, British Author
Naming Names: J.K. Rowling On Names
“I’m big on names.”
J.K. Rowling, British Author
Naming Names: Thomas Friedman On Naming
“If you can name the issue, you can own the issue.”
Thomas Friedman, American Author
Nomenclature: Reviving The Lost Art Of Naming The World
A good article on the naturalness of naming systems:
Cecil Brown, an anthropologist at Northern Illinois University who has studied folk taxonomies in 188 languages, has found that people recognize the same basic categories repeatedly, including fish, birds, snakes, mammals, “wugs” (meaning worms and insects, or what we might call creepy-crawlies), trees, vines, herbs and bushes.
Naming Names: Voltaire On Naming
“C’est un poids bien pesant qu’un nom trop tôt fameux!” | “What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous!”
François-Marie Arouet (as Voltaire), French Philosopher
Naming Names | Lewis Carroll On Naming
“Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully.
“Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: “my name means the shape I am — and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.”
Lewis Carroll (as Alice and Humpty Dumpty), English Author, in Through The Looking-Glass
Naming Names | Hesiod On Naming
“Do not get a name as overly lavish or too inhospitable.”
Hesiod, Greek Poet
Naming Names | Denzel Washinton On Naming
FRANK: “Brand names mean something, Jackie. Consumers rely on them to know what they’re getting. They know the company isn’t going to try to fool them with an inferior product. They buy a Ford, they know they’re gonna get a Ford. Not a fuckin’ Datsun. Blue Magic is a brand name; as much a brand name as Pepsi. I own it. I stand behind it. I guarantee it and people know that even if they don’t know me any more than they know the chairman of General Foods.”
JACKIE: “What the fuck are you talking about, Frank?”
FRANK: “What you’re doing, as far as I’m concerned, when you chop my dope down to five percent, is trademark infringement.”
Denzel Washington (as Frank Lucas), American Actor, in American Gangster
Naming Names | Milan Kundera On Naming
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
Milan Kundera, Franco-Czech Author