Narrating names

Folklore, April, 2002 by W.F.H. Nicolaisen

This is the second time that I have an opportunity to give a presidential address combining the study of names with folklore research, for on October 19, 1983 I ended my tenure as President of the American Folklore Society by addressing the participants of its annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee on the subject of "Names and Narratives" (Nicolaisen 1984b). Almost eighteen years ago, I was very conscious of the fact that that occasion was almost the first time in my academic career that I had drawn together threads which I had for many years regarded as completely separate but was now weaving into patterns to which both my chief research interests were making contributions. The reason why I was able to do so at that time had been the previous and somewhat belated realisation that, after all, the people who give, receive and use names are the same people who tell, listen to and enjoy stories. What was then, for me, a riskful innovation has since become, if not quite routine, a much more familiar perspective, and onomastic questions are never far from my mind when I am investigating something folkloric, while, in my role as a student of names, I never push aside or neglect to examine what many other more linguistically oriented name scholars regard as "mere folklore" and therefore not worth taking note of, and I have therefore also benefited greatly from the mutual interaction of concepts and terminologies in these two fields of study, not to say disciplines.

If this were a meeting predominantly attended by name scholars, I would probably use the occasion to focus on some of the folkloristic aspects of the world in which people who bear and use names live, but as this is primarily a gathering of folklorists, I intend to highlight certain onomastic facets of the lives of those who are sometimes, without much precision and even less justification, called the "folk." Unfortunately, the application of the term "name" to certain categories of communicative devices is so vague and, in many instances, so self-contradictory that a brief clarification as to what constitutes a "name" in the argumentation which follows is, it seems, necessary. In the first place, we must rid ourselves of the notion that names are simply words with additional, peculiar qualities, a kind of minor verbal subcategory. Admittedly, names share with words certain surface characteristics: they can serve syntactically as nouns, for example, though, and this is an essential difference, they do not form plurals or take the definite article, unless it is already part of the name as in The Thames, The Garioch, or The Minch. Visually, and this applies, among other languages as well to English, we distinguish names from nouns by writing them with capital initials in any part of the sentence, not just at the beginning where capitalisation is general. We also differentiate visually some names from the words from which they have been derived by differences in spelling: Taylor vs. tailor, or Gray vs. grey. In order to be able to make these visual distinctions, we must have a notion, perhaps an innate sense, of what names are, and it does not take a great degree of literacy to make them competently.

The two major differences between names and words, between onymic and lexical items, are, however, to be found on their functional and semantic levels, and it is in these respects that we need precise concepts and an equally precise terminology as a vehicle for those concepts. The functional contrast can probably be best expressed by the terms denotative for names and connotative for words, for the purpose of names is to individuate and therefore to function exclusively, whereas words group together and are consequently inclusive, as in Iceland vs. ice and Kingskettle in Fife vs. kettle. That, in the global context of our twenty-first-century world, such individuating identification is hardly ever universal is to be understood, but it is certainly the function of names to identify persons, places, boats, and so on in certain limited environments: in one class in school, one valley, one harbour, and so on. It is, in this functional respect, though, that there is still need for greater precision and clarity in our thinking. During the last few decades, there has been, for instance, a notable increase, within the field of onomastics, in the study of brand names, and the like, a scholarly pursuit of considerable merit, but is it concerned with names? When we are thinking in terms of automobiles, for example, nobody will claim that the item car, with a small initial, is a name, as it functions obviously in that inclusive, connotative way described earlier. We are treading on a slippery slope, however, if we regard Ford, Honda, or Rolls Royce as names, as they apply to all cars produced by the manufacturers in question, and even a Ford Escort, Honda Civic, or Rolls Royce Silver Cloud is not strictly a name in our rigid definition. It is only when we call our car George or Wendy or Drummer Boy that we are actually engaged in a naming process. The same is true of dogs, let us say, breeds of which, like schnauzer, doberman, alsatian are taxonomic designations and not names, like Rover, Hitler, or Prince. We can extend this to other spheres of life. A cat called Nathena, a snake called Sly or Pretzel, a goldfish called Jaws, a plant called Misty or Spot, a positron called Priscilla, an anglepoise lamp called Angus, a microchip called Irving, all fall within the category of what I shall today call names (Nicolaisen 1984b; 1996-7).