Naming Individuals and Identifying Persons

“Hey, the man from Phalerum! You! Apollodorus, won’t you wait? … I had a report from someone who got it from Philip’s son, Phoenix; but he said you knew about it too.” [1]

I want to raise a question that I can only sketch an inconclusive answer to: what functions do names fulfill? I argue that one can identify at least two functions of names. First, naming is an instrument of nomination: we name people to be able to distinguish them from other people, to talk to (or about) them. Secondly, names identify persons. Here, by identification, I do not mean the identification in the sense of the first function – i.e. identifying or distinguishing one individual from a group of people. Rather, this identification means the constitution of a personal identity, an identical self. Whenever I utter someone’s name to catch their attention (or to talk about someone), I simultaneously solidify their (and my) belief in their personal identity.

I think the more contentious claim is the second function: Names constitute identities. Would we not have a personal identity, a self, if we did not have names? Surely, even without names, we would still experience the privacy of our thoughts, right? And, surely, even a nameless individual would experience feelings of their own? Thoughts and feelings can only be experienced by us insofar as we are ourselves – that is, are identical. I do not wish to make the indefensible claim that there would not be sensations or thoughts without a name. Nonetheless, a nameless individual would, I believe, experience in a less subjective way. Names constitute subjects – it is no coincidence that whenever humanity is at stake, as was and is the case in concentration camps, prisons and wars, names are substituted for prisoner numbers and noms de guerre. Consider, too, that as soon as we start to domesticate and care for individual animals, (that is, we care about their subjective experience) we feel the urge to name them. This, I believe, suggests that having a name and being a subject are, in a certain sense, equivalent. 

As an illustration of the two functions of names, let us consider the English history of surnames.

William D. Bowman illustrates that the emergence of surnames in England coincided with the urbanization after the Norman conquest. “The rise of the large towns, and the growing populations in country districts made it increasingly difficult to identify an individual who bore only one name” (p.5). Supplementary information was required to identify individuals. This information, e.g. John-in-the-Lane, Richard atte Well or Bythewater (Cf. 127), produced prototypical surnames. These prototypical surnames fulfill the first of the aforementioned function: they help distinguish individuals on the basis of supplementary information.

Bowman identifies four classes of surnames: Location (Leicester, Hill, Burgon, Gascoigne, Wiltshire etc.) ancestry (patronyms such as Wilson, Johnson, and metronyms such as Margetson, Jennison) occupation or office (Smith, Wright, Chandler, Cook) and nicknames (Brown, Wolf, Finch, Pike, Goodspeed. Cf. 10 f.).

Bowman concludes that “Many of the surnames in these Rolls [the archives of the city of London Guildhall] give the names of crafts and trades that disappeared ages ago, yet in several instances the names that point to these occupations still survive. In the fourteenth century the craft of the

armourer was one of national importance. … But the scientific development of firearms killed the armourer’s craft” (129) – and armourer becomes Mrs. Armour, a treasurer Mr. Treasure.

In the early stages of their history, surnames had a literal meaning, referencing something other than the person themselves, something that was more or less accidentally associated with them. These kinds of names enabled judicial institutions to distinguish individuals. 

However, these prototypical surnames were mere heuristic devices. They did not, strictly speaking, constitute personal identities, for two reasons. First, in many cases, the names of individuals were not identical in two senses:

First, “[in] some cases people were known by more than one surname. Thus in the Calen. of Letter Book H. we read that “John Tykhill ‘bochier’, otherwise called John Skyft, and others have been maintainers of plaints” (125).  Additionally, names did not have a definite spelling: Bowman tells us that “as prior to the nineteenth century, most of these people had not the vaguest idea as to how their names were spelt this task was left to the discretion of parish officials” (26). Surnames merely fulfilled the function of singling out a certain individual within a community. A precise spelling of the surname was not required to this end. To make clear that I am Mrs. Mary Cottingham and not Mrs. Mary Mewes, I do not need to be able to spell my surname. In today’s alphabetized west, not knowing how to spell one’s own name seems unimaginable. Names today, in order to perform bifunctionally both as instruments of nomination and as constituents of the identical self, are required to be identical themselves.

The second reason why surnames, in the nascent stages of their emergence, could not constitute personal selves is because as prototypical surnames, they referenced something other than the named individual. 

To elucidate this remark, let us consider the peculiar asymmetry in one’s use of one’s own name versus one’s use of other people’s names. We use names of other people in several situations, in many situations of direct and indirect speech. In contrast, the spectrum of social situations in which we use our own name is restricted. Most frequently, I would guess, we announce or introduce ourselves by saying ‘Hello, I am …’. The context in which we use our name is most often one of asserting one’s own identity. Now imagine a 13th century citizen from London, John in-the-lane, saying ‘Hello, I am in-the-lane… John in-the-lane.’ It seems unlikely that John would really identify himself with his prototypical surname, as it references not himself but (presumably) the location of his residence or some other location otherwise associated with him.

However, as we have discussed, names can lose their literal meaning (e.g. due to technological progress, as in the archer’s case). This allows for a substitution of the original object of reference (the occupation, address, etc.) with a new object of reference: the identical person. This is the historical moment in which surnames adopted the second function of constituting selves.

Sources 

Bowman, William Dodgson. The Story of Surnames. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1931.

Plato. The Symposium. Translated with an introduction by Christopher Gill, Penguin Classics, London, 1999.

[1] Symposium, 172a