My daughter came home from grad school with the ultimate Father’s Day gift for her dad—an iPod Nano. To be more specific, a light metallic blue iPod Nano. As she began to show him how to download the music from his (evidently out-of-date) mp3 player, she looked at him and said, “Okay, Dad, what do you want to name it?”
“Name what?”
“Your iPod.”
“Oh—I didn’t know it needed a name.”
“How ‘bout ‘Baby Blues’?” I jumped in from my nearby perch on the couch.
“That works,” my daughter began to enter the name into the tiny sliver of metal.
“Why ‘Baby Blues’?” my husband asked.
“Because your gadget-thingy is the color of your eyes and it’s tiny like a baby and it plays music and we live in Memphis, home of the blues.”
It took a minute for it to sink in, and then my husband asked, “So, what would you name your iPod Nano if you had one?”
I was quick with my answer, “Peapod.”
“Peapod?” Father and daughter asked in unison.
“Yes. I want one in pea green. You know, the color of new life that germinates from the seeds inside the pod and grows into a verdant garden of music.”
My husband looked at our daughter and said, “Your mother has been writing poetry again.”
He was right. And you know, one purpose of poetry is the naming of things.
Throughout history poets have understood the necessity of giving names to things and events so we won’t forget their significance—their meaning. It started in the Garden, when God named Adam and Eve. Then he told Adam to name the animals.
How cool would that be? Imagine, for example, looking at a brown furry football-shaped animal covered in long sharp needles that could shoot out of its body and saying, “Hmm—porcupine.”
Parents take great care (or they should) in naming their children, sometimes passing on a family name with all its baggage and expectations. Others seek to imbue their offspring with help from on high, naming them after saints
or angels or even the Holy Mother Mary herself. In the Eastern Orthodox Christian
tradition, godparents sometimes do the naming, on the eighth day after the child’s birth. There is even a ceremony for it. Name Days (feast days of patron saints) are often celebrated with more pomp than birthdays.
Children themselves know the importance of names. How many times has a child run crying to his mother, “He called me a name!” And sometimes those names stick like duct tape throughout childhood and adolescence and even into adulthood, branding someone forever as a “crybaby” or “fatso” or worse. Remember the Johnny Cash song, “A Boy Named Sue?”
Companies often hire creative people to give names to their products, building their image and increasing sales. You might think you’re above their tactics, but would as many women buy Spanx if they were called “Support Tights” or “Middle Shapers”? And how many of us girls are immune to the effect of nail polish pigment names like “Smokin’ in Havana,” “Bubble Bath,” and “Root Beer Float”?
If you still aren’t convinced that people pay attention to names, check out the August 15 post called “Faster Than Kudzu”on the blog of best-selling author Joshilyn Jackson (Gods in Alabama; Between, Georgia). Her family was getting a kitten. Her blog post was a “call for names,” and would you believe more than 60 people wrote in with suggestions? Here’s a sampling: Katmandu, Piggle, Catastrophic Bubba, Piewhacker, Neva Bean, Crack, Newt (for a neutered cat), Zoloft, and Prozac.
After two days of considering all the write-ins, she posted a picture of this precious yellow and white kitten. The title of her blog post on August 17 was “Meet Sanity Jackson.” Sanity. Perfect, I thought. But then she said Sanity wasn’t really his name and that she’s still considering her options, including Hooky-do, “because his hands are made out of Velcro.” Hooky-do? Hey, but it’s working. I’m checking her blog every day to find out what she names that kitten.
As a writer, I spend a lot of time naming things—books, book chapters, short stories, poems, even blogs. Mine is called “Pen and Palette.” I went through about 25 names before I came up this one. I wanted the name to accomplish at least three things: (1) Identify me as a writer; (2) identify me as an artist; and (3) make a subtle play on Flannery O’Connor’s insistence that a writer must learn to “paint with words.” Again, why bother? Because a name is the first, and sometimes last, opportunity the writer has to hook you, the reader. And because it’s fun. And because naming is our God-given right, just like God told Adam in the Garden.
And so I ask you, would you have read this article if the title had been “The Importance of Names” or even “What’s In a Name?” Maybe. But when you saw the name, “myPod,” maybe your curiosity was piqued and you made a
decision to read on, or at least to invest in the first paragraph. Now, here you are at the end, and I hope it was worth the read. If nothing else, whether or not you’re a poet, maybe you’ll give it a little more thought the next time you name something… even your iPod.
Susan Cushman is an artist, writer and former publisher of a trade magazine for architects and builders. A native of Mississippi, she lives in Memphis, where she is writing her first novel.