Biosophilia

Naming

Aaron Booth entered the naming discussion, with an interesting question about sound and meaning. Here are his words:

Since I read Bart's post about naming, I've spent some time thinking about the sorts of reasons people have for naming their children. I came up with 4 reasons (in no particular order): sound, meaning, ethnicity, history (whether familial or broader historical context). Obviously in America the sound of a name takes precedent in most cases. I can't deny that sound was the primary reason for the name we chose. Most of the reformed/intellectual sorts tend to argue for meaning and history as the best reasons for choosing a name, but I've been wondering if that position is missing something. My question is mostly directed toward the linguist sorts among us (Courtney Huntington, Jeremy Wilkins, Doug Jones, Matt Greydanus), but everyone should feel free to give their two cents. Anyway, here's the question: what role should the sound of the words have in child naming? It seems that J.R.R. Tolkien put a lot of emphasis on sound when he created his various languages, and the same reformed/intellectual types referred to above love to talk about sound in poetry and the way certain words fit together.

I posted the following comment on his blog:

I am glad Greydanus weighed in. His statement, I believe, neatly--but not too neatly--summarizes the considerations. Sound should not be the only consideration, but it should be a consideration. You can think of this as the perennial question of form vs. content: sound = form; meaning = content. This method will not answer all possible questions or objections, but it will give you a good start.

I agree with Bart that meaning should be the first consideration. Meaning is not necessarily limited to "book" definitions--the kind in the baby name books. Booth's categories are quite good, and I suggest only that ethnicity and history seem to be species of the genus "meaning." If I'm right here, that means that we have the question of sound vs. meaning, with translation (what Booth indicated by the word "meaning"), ethnicity, and history subsumed under meaning.

One way to approach the issue then is to start with the meaning you want to communicate by the name you give your child (e.g., king (translation), English (ethnicity), and/or Richard the Lion-hearted (history). (It is not necessary to use all 3 aspects of meaning.) If you want your child's name to indicate a particular idea--such as farmer--you might choose Courtney, which, incidentally, has other possible translations. Once, you've chosen the idea and possible translations for your child's name, you could look through a list of names to find a few that have that meaning. If one of them sounds bizarre, then you might count it out.

This is only one of many possible combinations of approaching the naming process first by meaning, then by sound.

Regarding Tolkien's names: Tolkien was trying to do something very different with the names of his characters. He created a world filled with invented ethnicities (for an interesting discussion of Tolkien's characters, see C. S. Lewis's essay in the book "Tolkien and the critics"), and then he created names that fit those ethnicities. He made the naming process easier by first creating languages that went with each ethnicity; the names then fit the characters because it fit their ethnicity and language.

We can see, however, that the languages--we must begin with the languages, not the names--fit each of the ethnicities: strong, rock-like dwarfs have a very powerful, gutteral language; old, eternal elfs have a very fluid language; men speak a language much like our own, but somewhat higher in form; and hobbits speak like men, only more folky. Gandalf, the most obvious Christ-figure in the story, who dies and is reborn, has no language of his own, but speaks the language of those to whom he speaks. This division of language-types gives us more insight into Tolkien's thoughts about what type of language fits what type of man, than it gives us insight into what types of names we ought to use for our children.

For more of the thought-provoking discussion, go here. I recommend it to you.

These are my thoughts. Now, I welcome yours.