The Nature of Naming

Humans, by nature, create order about them by naming things. Carol Yoon remarked on this phenomena in children, who named elements of nature and created relationships between objects along the line of family ties. This tendency comes repressed as we become adults – but it still emerges in our more unguarded moments. Ever hear the joke about the guy who is having a love affair with “Bonnie” – only to find out that ‘she’ is really a car?

Apparently houses in England used to have names, not numbers. I was staying at ‘Garthdale’, up the road from ‘Fellside’ and across from ‘Rose Cottage.’ It was almost as if these were the permanent inhabitants of the village, whereas we humans were just temporary visitors. This puts property management into a different perspective –perhaps more accurate, sustainable. For in fact, these houses will outlast our rather short mortal existence. These are both the ancestors and the future. We should equally respect the character of their past , and consider the needs of successive humans. E.g. preserve the character of the tub, but give it new plumbing.

The British seem to have a great propensity not only for naming. but for breathing life into inanimate objects. “The pudding wants to be eaten.” “the cupboard wants to be rationalized.” ? Really? Since when does pudding have an opinion? So it was no great surprise when we arrived at the ‘tip’ (aka ‘dump’ in American English) to find the waste containers all carefully divided into names. The ‘wood’ wanted to be sorted out.


Of course, the purpose of the sorting was to increase the ability to recycle the individual elements. And indeed, a sign by the exit proudly displayed the percentage of waste which was successfully recycled. It was the act of identifying and naming the waste which breathed life back into the material. So our van full of stuff from emptying a garage became wood, metal, glass, soil. It became a game, a challenge to find a home for the material in the right bin – where it could continue to live. We could keep it from the nameless abyss of “waste.” My friends and I were eager that our own recycled percentage should meet or beat that of the site average. It was a game, a challenge, a source of pride.

The psychological impact of naming materials is subtle, and perhaps mostly a figment of my imagination, but potentially an interesting lense on life. So I honor the life in train which transports me around the country, I greet the cows by name on my morning runs, and I welcome the little people who live in my computer and compose these blogs. This is the great consciousness which kids understand, and which we seek as adults. Maybe it just starts with a name.