“To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world …” [Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince”]
Naming is to humans as photosynthesis is to plants. It is but one of the fundamental attributes of the human condition, yet perhaps one of the most curious and endearing. On a video call with my brother last week, he took a gulp of scalding hot tea from a mug I recognised. “Hey, that’s mine,” I said, admiring once again the sheer volume of it, the very thing that had caught my eye on the charity shop shelf all those years ago. But we both know that the mug belongs to him now. After all, he was the one who named it; Big Brown. Indeed.
We name “to identify, symbolise, refer, describe, simplify, organise and, most importantly, to tame”, says the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Cave paintings from prehistoric times universally include handprints, much like these childhood relics parents preserve from kindergarten; clay imprints of baby hands made long before dexterity allows for the act of writing. There is something inherently human about leaving a mark.
Some of us shorten our names. Some of us cast them off and adopt new ones.
Nowadays, we name cars, (Khalesi Car), musical instruments (Black Mamba), plants (this I have never done, most likely because I will inevitably end up killing them, more on that to follow), pets (Gabo, Valentina, Frida), toys (Foxy Loxy, Lula); the list is endless but not without its limitations. We do not tend to name livestock, for example, and there is a good reason for this.
Nicholas Epley, Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago, ascribes this tendency to name inanimate objects to human cognitive and emotional intelligence. Known as anthropomorphism, we name objects with which we have formed an emotional attachment or consider as extensions of our identity. Hence my brother’s naming of the tea mug, and my reticence to name my houseplants. If each of my plants had a name, then each death would mean a constant funeral in my heart, much the same as farmers do not name animals earmarked for the slaughter.
Needless to say, some objects are rarely named; the lavatory for example, or the nose hair trimmer, which may be because they are rarely referenced in public discourse or because of their expendability.
Though naming a boat or a coffee machine may seem like a mere eccentricity, it actually goes far deeper, revealing a need to bond with and exert control over the named object. Or person.
We cannot know the earliest human names. I like to imagine cavemen names, Ug, and Thunk and Fred, but these have been lost to us. The spoken word is ephemeral. Charles Darwin postulated that the earliest humans communicated with each other by singing, just like birds. Imagine that dawn chorus!
All we have conclusive evidence of, however, is that which has been preserved in writing.
One of the earliest names ever recorded comes from Sumar, in Ancient Mesopotamia, where some of the first written records were discovered carved in clay tablets. These detailed the economic transactions of barley, and are thought to be signed by “Kushim”. Some scholarly debate arises as to whether Kushim is actually a name, or a role, like “slave” or “barley counter”, but in that case, why sign it at all? So, there you have it. Kushim; the very first name recorded in writing in our species.
Most ancient peoples, like Kushim, made do with mononymic names, much like “Madonna”, or “Cher”; though in Ancient Greece these were more like “Sophocles”, “Euripedes” or “Pythagoras”. As population grew, this mononym was expanded to allow for further identification or specification of which Pythagoras the speaker was referring to. By adding “Son of Mnesarchus” to the name, the listener could then be sure of which Pythagoras the speaker was on about, assuming that they stuck around for long enough to listen to that mouthful. This is known as a patronym.
Back in Ancient Athens and other Greek states, patronymic names; those related to the male ancestry, have been in use since approximately 3000 BCE, though raiding hoards and book burners after that time have erased many valuable cultural artefacts. They also form the basis for most naming practices around the globe.
Prefixes “Mac” (son of) and “Ní ” (daughter of) are common in Gaelic surnames and have been recorded as early as the 10th century CE in Ireland and Scotland. They signify the practice of creating surnames by designating the child as begotten of the father. My surname in Gaelic is Ni Ríain, daughter of Ryan. Perhaps for this reason, in this particular case, I prefer the anglicised version.
The Ancient Greeks also paved the way, in written texts at least, as influencers when it came to the use of demotic surnames, those based on “deme” or a particular place. Diogenes of Sinope is one example of a birthplace used as a demotic surname. Of course, many texts which would have completed the holes in our knowledge were set aflame by raiding Viking and Barbarian tribes in the period between the late 5th to the 10th century in Europe.
Regardless of this, it would appear that surnames were not common in Europe until around the 13th century, many of which were based on a location; Brooke, Marsh, Hill, again using the demotic and patronymic forms of surname generation.
Though this may seem like a rather swarthy leap through history, surnames were not commonplace among the general populace in Africa, and Korea or Japan until the 18th and 19th Centuries respectively. The reasons for this require a whole ‘nother ramble.
Interestingly, it is here in the Middle Kingdom that one of the few examples of matronymic naming systems exists, where surnames were generated from the mother’s name. Historians posit that in China, surnames first existed in noble clans, the surnames of which use the female radical “女” in the Mandarin character for surname, for example Ji (姬), Jiang (姜), Yao (姚) and Yíng (嬴). This system was phased out in favor of a patronymic one cerca 1000 BCE, with all names thereafter reflecting the patrilineal legacy.
Curiously, this trend is beginning to reemerge in recent years, according to Xu Qi, a Nanjing based sociologist. The reasons are manifold; an emerging feminist campaign for matrilineal naming practices, the increasing prevalence of female children within one-child families and the increasing presence of women in the demographic, educational and political spheres, to name but a few.
A handprint. A yoke. A sign of love and belonging. A means of self-actualisation or revealing who’s your daddy. Whatever way you look at it, the act of naming is so very human, it transcends the boundaries of time and place, connecting us to the past, the present, and to each other. Making us, and our cars and pets and mugs “unique in all the world.”
