What\u2019s in a name? We all have names \u2013 hi, I\u2019m Jim. There\u2019s more to my name than that, but for starters, call me Ishmael . . . eh, Jim, that is. (Admittedly I\u2019m out of my element when discussing classic authors like Melville.) So names are important. But just what are they, and why do we have them? <\/p>\n
Those questions don\u2019t seem all that tough – – unless you want them to be. If you pursue the more difficult issues raised by such questions, you will eventually reach one of those show-stopping queries from philosophy, i.e., just who and what are we, once our names are taken away? This is all Zen stuff, but I like Zen stuff, so let\u2019s follow this a bit further if you don\u2019t mind.<\/p>\n
Names. They are necessary for social living, and human survival requires living social. We are hard-wired as a social species, although we\u2019re not \u201ceusocial\u201d like ants and bees and termites, with their robot-like, Orwellian-nightmare living arrangements. Ants and bees and termites don\u2019t need names. Neither do most members of the Borg Collective<\/a> \u2013 although they do need numbers for operational efficiency. (I am obviously more comfortable talking about Star Trek than classic literature). <\/p>\n But we humans need complicated names, because we retain much individuality and independence despite the intricate social structures that we depend on to stay alive and entertained (e.g., family, neighborhood, government, business enterprises, political groups, and increasingly, the \u201cdistributed\u201d social networks evolving via the 2.0 web). We try to find the right mix of order and freedom, rules and chaos, and prose and poetry in our individual and collective lives. So we use our language facilities to develop identifiers for each of us, i.e. complex mixtures of symbolic sounds and squibbles on paper or computer screen, in combinations that apply just to us. Our names.<\/p>\n (Well, not exactly \u201cjust to us\u201d. It\u2019s a big world and we don\u2019t seem to mind a relatively small degree of name repetition. When I Google my own name in quotes, I get 475 results. When I Google \u201cJohn Murphy\u201d I get a count of 6,540,000, and \u201cMaria Rodriguez\u201d garners a pretty respectable 3,750,000. John Smith still looks like the champ, though, at 22,200,000 hits. To be honest, I can\u2019t remember ever meeting a \u201cJohn Smith\u201d; but they\u2019re out there somewhere, obviously.)<\/p>\n Before we get to the big Zen question of what is left of us without our names, let\u2019s take a second to think about a less ambitious but still interesting issue: how do the names that we are given (usually by our parents) affect who we become? I\u2019m Jim, more formally James. Would I have been different than I am today had I been called Bruno or Anthony or Shawn? How about Hollis or Ivan or Dunstan? What if the family and communities that I grew up in had more often used \u201cJames\u201d rather than \u201cJim\u201d? <\/p>\n There is some evidence that names help determine our character and behavior. One research study indicates<\/a> that girls with highly feminine names steer clear of math and science classes and careers more than the Hildas and Berthas. Another one argues<\/a> that boys who grow up with popular names such as Michael, Joshua and Christopher have a good chance of leading law-abiding lives, whereas young men with names like Kareem, Alec or Garland wind up in jail more frequently. This study focused on the effect of having an uncommon or unpopular name and found some correlation with increased incarceration rates. Supposedly, more feminine-ish names for boys also raise the chances of doing time; e.g. you are more likely to see a Maurice or Ernest behind bars than a Bill or Ed. (But not by much; the study concludes that names aren\u2019t causes of crime, although they might have some influence on life situations). <\/p>\n So, obviously we and those around us do take names very seriously. There is something in a name, after all. There are reasons why we have them. But what? Well, there is practicality and flexibility; bees and ants don\u2019t need names because they all follow strict genetic programming in responding to the environment in a social fashion. But our \u201chuman species collective\u201d does better by deviating from strict instructions in unique circumstances. In order to send someone on a mission that they and those around them haven\u2019t done before, the human species needs a way of identifying a specific individual and separating them out from others. The mission requires it.<\/p>\n But that could be done with a simple alpha-numeric system, as the Borg used. We humans, with our super-brainpower and emergent self-consciousness, have \u2018higher needs\u2019, including the need to assert ourselves as free individuals. (Well, free at heart, anyway.) So we want to be more than a number. We like the idea of having an \u201cidentifier\u201d similar to those we use for tangible or perceivable things like pretty rocks (\u201cAmber\u201d, \u201cCrystal\u201d) and sunrises (\u201cDawn\u201d). We also want our names to be distinct from the names of those around us (up to a point, anyway \u2013 it can\u2019t be TOO MUCH unlike others; I grew up amidst ethnic Polish, Irish and Italian kids, and I\u2019m glad that my name was not Xi Tse-Huan.) <\/p>\n So, our \u201cname policies and philosophies\u201d say a lot about what we humans are like on deeper levels. We\u2019re getting pretty deep here, but let\u2019s go on to the even more metaphysically flavored question \u2013 what would we be without our names? Yes, now we\u2019re entering Zen territory. But also Christianity \u2013 e.g., there are many names for God (including \u201cGod\u201d itself), but at various points in scripture, God is said to be of the opinion that he or she is ultimately beyond all names \u2013 \u201cI am who am\u201d, or more simply and powerfully, \u201cI am\u201d. Try Genesis 26:3, Exodus 3:14, and John 8:58. <\/p>\n Nonetheless, let us move on to the Far East and its love for paradoxical viewpoints. \u201cI have something that has no name and no form\u201d said the 7th Century Chinese Zen patriarch, Hui Neng. More recently, 1960\u2019s Zen impresario Alan Watts said that he is not Alan Watts, not in the ultimate sense. And \u201cthe ultimate sense\u201d is what Zen is in search of (with the qualification that if you find the ultimate sense and name it \u201cthe ultimate sense\u201d, then it is not the ultimate sense). <\/p>\n (Watts also said that the menu is not the meal. If our names are the menu, what are we as ‘meals’, outside what a tiger or shark might think?)<\/p>\n The Tao is also after that “ultimate sense” (and I\u2019m one of those who believe that Zen is more of a Taoist thing than a Buddhist thing). So what does the Tao say about the \u201cname, no-name, beyond all names\u201d topic? A lot, right from the git-go. The second sentence of the Tao Te Ching says (more or less, depending upon the translation): \u201cthe name that can be given is not the absolute name\u201d. Also in chapter 25: \u201cthere was something before heaven and earth . . . truthfully it has no name, but I call it The Way [or Tao]\u201d. <\/p>\n We humans like to think that we are more than the sum of our daily circumstances, e.g. what we had for lunch, how much we can spend, how our bodies are holding up, how our clothes and speech and performances influence others, etc. We\u2019d like to think that we are ultimately \u201cspiritual\u201d in nature (well, quite a few of us, anyway). So, the closer we might get to the ultimate spirituality, the less that our names should matter. <\/p>\n Do they ever mean absolutely nothing? Without our names, do we completely disappear in the wake of the infinite? Or do we become \u201cco-eternal with the infinite\u201d (sort of what the Church says about Jesus Christ), with no further need for a name?<\/p>\n This is interesting fodder for one\u2019s meditation practice, so long as it doesn\u2019t distract you from actual meditation And usually it does (which is too bad, because meditation can be like tasting the nameless ultimate, at least on its better days). But that\u2019s just where most of us are. Still here on planet Earth. So, hello, I\u2019m Jim. And who, might I ask, are you? <\/p>\n (Ah yes, I do remember the 1978 song by that title; by The Who, quite appropriately).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What\u2019s in a name? We all have names \u2013 hi, I\u2019m Jim. There\u2019s more to my name than that, but for starters, call me Ishmael . . . eh, Jim, that is. (Admittedly I\u2019m out of my element when discussing classic authors like Melville.) So names are important. But just what are they, and why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2483"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2486,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483\/revisions\/2486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}