Naming and Identity in Literature

The Issue

Names provide the primary means by which persons are known. The importance attached to naming a child varies among cultures. In some, naming is a ritual carried out with great ceremony; in others, the pleasing sound of a name or names of favorite book characters may be sources. In the United States, criteria for naming a child span the entire range from highly informal, even whimsical ones, to those based on considerable reflection.

Sometimes nicknames are temporary; others stick for a lifetime. Some nicknames are complimentary; others are neutral or derogatory. In any case, they are used when some characteristic is so marked that the nickname seems to identify the person more suitably than the actual name does. Furthermore, a person may acquire a name completely different from that given at birth. Some are adopted to hide one’s identity or to show significant behavioral change, for example. In literature as in life, nicknames fall into several categories such as those associated with ethnicity or race, status or position, regional practices or customs, geographical location, and identification with religious or classical figures.

Behavior or Character Traits

A character in Robert Bird’s Nick of the Woods (1837) is Nathan Slaughter, suggesting possible character trait identity. This is confirmed when Nathan, also known as “Nick,” (“nick” seems an appropriate verb) gains the name “Bloody Nathan.” The apparently gentle Quaker turns out to be a violent man. Several characters in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales (1823-1841) are named or undergo name changes that describe behavior. One is Hurry Harry March in The Deerslayer (1841). His shooting an American Indian girl impulsively and endangering his companions demonstrates the behavior that his name suggests. The identity of the title character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is revealed in his name. He represents Everyman, capable of yielding to temptation and desire as all humans are. His wife’s allegorical name, Faith, identifies her with the force of goodness in the world. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s character Evangeline St. Clare, nicknamed Little Eva, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) has a name that fits this angelic, blond, blue-eyed maiden who dresses in pure white and embodies the Christian virtue of charity.

In twentieth-century literature, the inherently royal aspect of Uncle Caesar in O. Henry’s “A Municipal Report” is emphasized in “King Cettiwayo,” a nickname given at first in jest. Upon finding that Uncle Caesar (also suggesting royalty) is descended from African nobility, the narrator better understands the depth of his loyalty. The name of Sinclair Lewis’s Martin Arrowsmith in Arrowsmith (1925) suggests “straight as an arrow,” or steadfast, which is appropriate for this humanitarian scientist. Arrowsmith is an idealist who fights the temptation to compromise his integrity. The name Burden identifies characters in William Faulkner’s Light in August (1932) and Faulkner’s Joanna Burden is obsessed with the issue of slavery; her “burden” is to fight for equality to the end. Ellen Glasgow’s Mrs. Burden, in They Stooped to Folly (1929), is unable to free herself from the burden that her conscience imposes on her. The nickname “Haze” aptly describes the character Hazel Motes, a preacher with a flawed vision in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood (1952). With a figurative “mote,” or particle, in his eye, his judgment is “hazy,” and he preaches an antireligious doctrine rather than Christian love. In another O’Connor story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953), the nickname the Misfit establishes the identity of a notorious escaped murderer. The African American writer Toni Morrison creates the character Dead Macon in Song of Solomon (1977). Because he is “dead” to human feeling as he relentlessly pursues material success, the name is a suitable one for this wealthy black businessman. The American Indian writer James Welch nicknames the Blackfeet tribesman Fools Crow “White Man’s Dog” in Fools Crow (1986). Whatever his virtues are, Fools Crow is identified as being weak and overly subservient to whites.

Ethnicity or Race

Names or name changes that identify a character’s ethnic group or race abound in North American literature. Willa Cather is representative of American writers who have focused on the experience of immigrants in the United States. Her use of noticeably Old World names establishes that identity. Among these works is O Pioneers! (1913) which tells of the experiences of the Swedish immigrants in the Bergson family on the Nebraska frontier. In The Song of the Lark (1915), the Swedish immigrant is Thea Kronborg, daughter of a Methodist minister in Colorado. My Ántonia (1918) returns to the Nebraska prairie in the story of Ántonia Shimerda, daughter of Bohemian immigrants. The mixture of Anglo-American and Asian names in such novels as Yoshiko Uchida’s The Best Bad Thing (1983) demonstrates the family’s sense of being torn between tradition and the desire to become more American. Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake (2003) is one of the most well known and critically acclaimed explorations of identity through the connection of ethnicity, identity, and naming. Growing up, the main character, who is born to a Bengali couple who had immigrated to America, initially prefers his legal name of Gogol; however, he begins to reject it as a young adult attempting to assimilate into American culture. Similarly, in Lisa Ko's debut novel The Leavers (2017), the protagonist, Deming, is adopted by a white couple after his mother, a Chinese immigrant, disappears when he is young. His adoptive parents give him a new name, Daniel, and this change, of which Deming is wary, is reflective of the identity crisis he experiences as he attempts to adjust to a new life.

The World War II era produced a number of works in which names identify ethnicity. For example, in 1941, Thomas Bell (originally Belejcak) published Out of This Furnace, in which John Dobrejcak is given two nicknames: “Dobie,” reflecting a shortened name, and “Hunky” to indicate his Bohemian background. Tennessee Williams, in The Glass Menagerie (1944), deliberately uses the Irish name Jim O’Connor for the “gentleman caller”; because of his Irish name, Laura’s mother automatically assumes that he surely must like to drink, a behavior that she rejects. Norman Mailer, in the World War II novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), uses names to highlight racial diversity. Julio Martinez is a Latino from San Antonio, Texas; Roy Gallagher has an Irish background; Joey Goldstein is Jewish; Czienwiez’s name and nickname reflect his Polish-American ethnicity; Steve Minetta is Italian American; and William Brown represents the “all-round American,” the “typical” white Protestant American.

Social Status Labels

Names or nicknames can also indicate social standing, or lack of it, as representative examples indicate. Thomas N. Page is only one writer who names a character Mammy to designate a black slave in his Red Rock (1898). At the other end of the social scale, Williams, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), nicknames a wealthy plantation owner and his wife Big Daddy and Big Mama Pollitt. Rather than size, the nicknames identify them as the “bosses” on the plantation. Ralph Ellison’s character of the Invisible Man emphasizes a total lack of identity, for in a racist society, he feels invisible, without an identity.

Skills or Talents

Another name source identifies some skill or inherent gift. One early example is Hawkeye in Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826). Nathaniel “Natty” Bumppo is called Hawkeye because of his precise marksmanship. In the later novel The Pathfinder (1840), he is called Pathfinder because of his extraordinary ability in the forest. Although the infant could not know of the “gift” he was credited with having, Tommy Luck in Bret Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp” is so named because, when he is born into a rough, untamed work camp community, he has an amazing softening effect on the profane, tough men. In a later novel, Lady Oracle (1976) by the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, Joan Foster first adopts her late aunt’s name, Louisa K. Delacourt, and later develops an alter ego, Lady Oracle, because of her success as a mystic poet. Claude McKay, in Banjo: A Story Without a Plot (1929), gives the nickname “Banjo” to the character Lincoln Agrippa Daily because of his identity as a banjo player.

Appearance

Some characters are associated with physical characteristics. For example, in Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick (1867), the title character is never identified by any other name in this “rags to riches” story. John Steinbeck’s adolescent character Edward Carson in The Wayward Bus (1947) is nicknamed “Pimples” because of his skin condition. Similarly, in James Jones’s World War II novel From Here to Eternity (1951) Judson is known as “Fatso” because of his size. The title character Little Big Man in Thomas Berger’s 1964 novel Little Big Man serves a double purpose: to identify him with his short stature and to become his American Indian name. The “Big” is indicative of his bravery and worthiness, since he is described as slender.

Regional

Especially in literature of the American South, although not exclusively, a number of novels and stories contain characters who are identifiable largely by nicknames that reflect regional practices or geographic location. In the works of many Southern writers, use of the title “Miss” plus the first name (Miss Sallie, for example) identifies the character with the South. In some cases, the reader is never told the complete name. In the case of Kentuck in Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” the miner who carries this nickname is identified with a place of geographical origin.

Allusions

In the case of characters who are given names of figures in classical or biblical literature or with religious associations, their identity is dependent on the reader’s knowing what the intended symbolic association is. For example, Pauline Cambron, who takes the name Sister Dolorosa in James L. Allen’s story “Sister Dolorosa,” illustrates a double intention. Her identity as a Roman Catholic nun is straightforward; however, the name “Dolorosa” further establishes an identity with suffering (dolorosa means “painful” or “suffering pain”). This is in character with the nun, for although she is attracted to a man, she keeps her vows and consigns herself to lifelong penance for having entertained thoughts of sexual attraction. Whereas one would expect Satan to be a nickname, it is otherwise in Mark Twain’s novella The Mysterious Stranger (1916). Satan takes the human name Philip Traum, appearing as a handsome young man to whom people are drawn in spite of his misanthropic philosophy. Some other works have a character named Devil, thus identifying the character clearly. The identity of Lazarus, a character in William Faulkner’s Pylon (1935), is dependent on a reader’s recognizing that the tall, pale, gaunt, specter-like man who looks as if he could have returned from the dead, has the name of a biblical character who dies and is brought back to life by Jesus. A representative example of a classical figure used in naming a modern character is seen in Dion Anthony, a major character in Eugene O’Neill’s play The Great God Brown (1926). Here, Dion is a nickname for the classical Dionysus, who represents, in classical literature and in O’Neill’s character, creativity and imaginative power. J. K. Rowling's hugely popular Harry Potter series (1997–2007) features characters with names that can be considered to be rooted in mythology, including the wise professor Minerva McGonagall and Professor Remus Lupin, a werewolf.

Bibliography

Blicksilver, Edith, editor. The Ethnic American Woman: Problems, Protests, Lifestyle. Kendall/Hunt, 1978. While naming is not the focus of this work, it provides the background out of which stereotyping of minority groups can occur.

Butcher, Philip, editor. The Minority Presence in American Literature: 1600–1900. 2 vols. Howard UP, 1977. Excerpts from more than thirty writers whose work contains ethnic minority characters.

Jen, Gish. "Migration, a Makeshift Family, and Then a Disappearance." Review of The Leavers, by Lisa Ko. The New York Times, 16 May 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/books/review/the-leavers-by-lisa-ko.html. Accessed 26 Aug. 2019.

Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature. Temple UP, 1982. An insightful introduction to the images of various Asian American groups in literature.

Nelson, Gerald B. Ten Versions of America. Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. Provides a kaleidoscope of American characters that collectively make up a literary description of Americans.

Watkins, Floyd C. In Time and Place. U of Georgia P, 1977. Discusses cultural changes, diversity, and the mobility of Americans, which influence and result in regional literature.