The Names of Things

Names are of tremendous importances...more so than I think seems at first obvious. The names of gods in early cults (including an obscure sect from the Jordan River Valley that worshipped a sky-father called Yahweh) were forbidden to be spoken because the very name of god carries with it the divine power. The Ancient Greek word semantor ("namer") denoted someone of great power to command. The first human action in Genesis was the naming of the animals in the Garden. The names we give things become not merely signs in alpha-numerics that serve as convenient representations, but they become the essence of namer and named together, bound.

So let me comment on one of my favorite aspects of modern America. The naming of African-American children. I was watching a Pistons game and one of the players is named Tayshaun Prince. Tayshaun is such a great name. It is completely taylored to an imagined identity based on aspiration and hope. The name embodies a unique person. People make fun of African-American names like Tayshaun, but I love it. And in a weird way they are becoming standardized...we are withnessing the formation of a primary cultural lexicon in the form of a cannon of new names and naming-forms gaining currency. I'm just saying, nobody in Germany is named Tayshuan, and they are so much the poorer for it. In a way it provides a contrast--and a kind of mirror--to the four other major child-name threads in American history: biblical names (Abraham, Matthew, Mary); classical/mythological names (Horace, Livia, Hector); naming after family (my middle name is my mother's twin brother's name, my father and his father are both William); and naming for weird bourgois ideas of distinctive patrician euphony which often seem to be words from social-studies (the bevy of Dakotas and Madisons and such not to mention Gwyneth Paltrow's--whose name is mythological--choice to name her child [shudder] "Apple"). This last strand is most obviously opposed to names like Tayshaun. The patrician sounding names are attempts to say something about the parents (classy, important) the other is an attempt to say somehting about the child (unique, befitting your notice).

Maybe I'm just jealous because, while I'm happy with it, Justin isn't exactly a unique name. It was, in fact, the most popular boys' name the year I was born. But I have not heard of another Tayshaun...even though now that I hear it, it makes a sort of sense.

UPDATE: Speaking of names: Yes, I know a young man named "Justin Thyme". Sound it out...there you go, get it? Yeah, me too.