Real true names.

[mrissa]

For workout fodder, I have been watching Leverage S4. It's not very good, although it has compensating factors for me (the compensating factors are named Hardison, Eliot, and Parker), and one of the things I like least is the stuff they consider running gag or arc plot. The one I'm thinking of at the moment is a question that falls flat for me in most of its incarnations, and that is: what is Sophie's real name?

I can tell you. Sophie's real name is Sophie.

See, I don't care what it says on her birth certificate. I don't care what it says on the most legal of her legal documents. The four people she works with most, the four people she appears to care about most, call her Sophie. And therefore her name is Sophie. She may also have another real name. But Sophie is her real name.

I have a friend named Ctein, and from conversations with him I understand he has gone through the legal process to make sure that all documents reflect this. That is his name. But guess what? If the US government thought his name was John Smith or Susan Goldstein or Bobatundae Chen, his real name would still be Ctein. Because when I see him, I say, "Hey, Ctein!", and he says, "Hi!" and gives me a hug. If instead he sighed and said, "I told you not to call me that. Please call me Larry," and he wasn't joking, then his real name would be Larry. But it's not, it's Ctein.

One of my friends posted a list on Facebook about being polite to transgendered people, and as far as I could tell, the rule of thumb was, "Assume transgendered people are people; proceed." Because I could not think of any other circumstance in which someone would say, "Hello, my name is Jennifer," and it would be polite to respond with, "But what is it REALLY? What is your REAL name?" If someone says, "Hello, my name is Jennifer," the polite response is, "Pleased to meet you, Jennifer." Or possibly, "Duck, Jennifer, there are ninjas coming at your head!" But mostly the former. The latter circumstance rarely arises but is still more commonly polite than quizzing Jennifer on her REAL name.

The stories where finding out who somebody used to be turns out to be the most important thing--I can connect to those sometimes. I can connect to those when who that person used to be was forcibly taken from them. So, like, slave narratives. Or some Native American/First Nations stories. Times when someone had to hide. Times when they've forgotten who they used to be, although those are iffy for me because they're so often done badly. But when someone has had a good degree of free choice, I feel pretty strongly about respecting that free choice. If they've left a parent of origin who was pretty crappy, sometimes they have kept the name that parent gave them, and sometimes they've picked a new one, and I don't feel that insisting that the real true them is not the interesting person they've built, but rather the childhood they left, is a good idea. I feel that that's disrespectful of the person they've built and the choices they've made. And even when it's not a matter of crappy parenting--yes, the past is important. It contains our roots. But I think we can get way too caught up in that. In the case of "what is Sophie's real name?", it's a very superficial rooting. We have no ongoing character Sophie could turn out to secretly be, no history that could turn out to suddenly be hers. We already met her family of origin. We could just now discover that they originally named her Madeleine or Mehitabel or Claudia or Claire. Which...would not make her not-Sophie in any way that I can see.

So I tend to bounce off of secret name magic in fantasy, and I'm bouncing off it even more in Leverage, where it has no built-up use. The kennings and cognomens that we have--they are knowable. They are reachable. The way we have them is by being ourselves. You cannot keep them secret, because you walk through the world making a hole that is shaped like Sophie, or like Ctein, or like Mrissahainen mighty-sinewed chemist's daughter, or like you. And the parts of yourself that are secret to you can only stay really completely secret for so long before they reach out and shape bits of glass into tiny worlds--and even when they do, the people who have been around you will nod and say, well, that's the sort of thing, you know. I didn't know it would be that world in specific. But I suspected she might. There will be someone who is not in the least surprised, because you have been going around being you, and even when it's an unpredictable kind of you, there will at the very least be people who are smart enough not to try to predict, after awhile.

Maybe that's just in my life. Maybe this Sophie's-name thing is working for people because they have lives full of people who persist in trying to predict in detail and being surprised when it comes out funny. Or maybe there are some of you for whom the secret name thing works better, and you'll be able to tell me why in comments.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

The secret name thing works for me in two respects that I think you haven't brought up here:

1) If Sophie's parents named her Madeleine or Mehitabel or Claudia or Claire, indeed, that does not make her not-Sophie -- but it does make her a Sophie for whom being Madeleine or Mehitabel or Claudia or Claire is part of her past, and part of what shaped her into being who she is today. That old name is relevant because she chose to leave it behind, and the choosing is an interesting decision. Did she just hate the sound of the name? Was she named for a person she doesn't want that connection to? Did she not mind the name, but wanted to be Sophie because it was important to her to be named for wisdom? Etc. The old name isn't who she is today, but it's a part of who she was, and that's interesting to me -- without in any way negating the significance and primacy of the name she chose.

2) Specific to fantasy, secret names can be relevant in another way, which is that Something Else knows the name: a god, the cosmos in an impersonal sense, etc. Which is why I can accept the notion of a secret name having true power in the way a name of daily use and more mundane significance doesn't. Naming is often a ritual, and I can see that giving power to Madeleine or Mehitabel or Claudia or Claire, if Sophie didn't do another ritual to leave that name behind and replace it with her chosen one. (This being not an option Leverage has, yeah, that gag strikes me as not very interesting.)

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Eh, I can see the value of the secret name as a sort of admission password for an inner circle with some commonality; but I also think the speakeasy is overrated.

The fact that most of these transgender-awareness rants (just like most of the race-awareness rants, cultural-appropriation awareness rants, antisexism rants, et alia) ultimately distill down to "Assume people want to be treated as human; proceed accordingly" is about 90% of why the antics of the Tumblr Outrage Brigade have worn me out so much recently that I can't even read half the reposts of two people I consider friends. CALL PEOPLE BY THE NAME THEY WANT TO BE CALLED. Call people by the gender they want to be called. The end.

What worries me is the possibility that there are some people for whom the "proceed accordingly" direction is insufficient because they have never treated ANY humans decently.

How does one pronounce "Ctein"?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

The secret name, in the Ursula Le Guin sense, works for me because it represents the part of one's identity which is private and known only to oneself, or to the few people whom one most trusts and loves.

It's not literally about a name, it's about the idea that we have a public self, a self known to intimates, and a self known only to us. These can overlap to some extent, but most, if not all, people do have some elements of themselves which they see as being private and intimate, not to be revealed to the world. That is the secret name.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

I want to know how you say Ctein but I think I asked that before and you told me.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Oh good, someone else who doesn't know. :D

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

The C is hard like a K; the "ei" is "eye" like "Einstein"; the t and n have their normal values. "Ktain". That initial consonant cluster is a little odd to English-speakers, but there are and have been languages where it was common.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

It belatedly occurs to me that I might have just said "like the second half of 'Einstein' but with a K instead of an S".

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

Speaking as the mom of an adopted kid with a new name, I think it matters more what you think your name is, rather than what those who live you call you, if those are in conflict.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

True, that's why Ctein gets to be the one to say, "Call me Ctein," rather than, "Call me Larry."

But Sophie is going around saying, "Call me Sophie."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think if it's really private and intimate, though, going around going, "Oooooh, what is it, ooooh, can you guess?" is...pretty tacky.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, I feel like "I used to go by Ed but now I go by Nathan" (I have a friend like that) is a fine but pretty trivial part of someone's identity. It's not something to spend huge amounts of time/attention/energy on mostly. A couple of the people reading this have names like that. It's fine, it's mildly interesting that they've chosen to share, it's just...not a huge deal, not something I would spend arc plot on when I don't have that much time on their backstory.

And it would be interesting to have your relationship with your deity expressed by how they reacted to a name change--whether they were stubborn, whether they were accepting, respectful, forgetful, whatever--but I haven't seen people use it that way. It's just Secret Name Powerful The End.

[jenett]

This.

Jenett is not my legal name: it is the name everyone outside of work and my family of origin calls me.

But I also work in a religious tradition where I have other names. One of them's relatively public (for definitions of public that include "will use it on the Internet), one of them is private, and I use it only with people I'd step into intimate and challenging religious rituals requiring deep trust with (and where I am at least plausibly likely to do that, which leaves out some people I trust that much, but would not ever be in ritual with that way.)

Someone using the latter one triggers a *whole* cascade of layered trust/protection decompression, and there are times when being able to do that in four syllables is a very handy tool indeed. On the other hand, I do not want to give everyone this key.

That name is very much the 'secret' name. And it's also really me. But it's a fairly specific face of me. And if you want me to pick my 'real' name, I'd go for Jenett.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

I was coming here to talk about how the secret name thing doesn't work for me, and here's the interesting thing, it's the same reason why it works for you.

It's like this: yes, we all have a private self and a public self (or perhaps several of each). But knowing a name that belongs to someone's private self doesn't give you access to that self. Quite the opposite: that name only works for people who already have access. If you're trying to get my attention in a public place and I don't know you from a marmoset, you need to shout the name I tell everyone.

There are exceptions and countervailing principles. In a world of magic and demons, perhaps a "true name" is more like a telephone number than anything else: it's what you plug into the sorcery to indicate whom you wish to talk to. Demons do not give out their names lightly for the same reason that people don't give out their phone numbers lightly: oy, such a nuisance to be interrupted at all hours! In a world of mortals and gods, addressing a god on terms that imply intimacy is a presumptuous act, and may well get you zotted if you don't have good cause.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Regarding the "Assume transgendered people are people; proceed": as someone else mentions, that is often the case with such lists. I recently saw such a list regarding adults with autism; as I said the the person who passed it along, most of it would be helpful to various members of my family, none of whom have autism.

I generally agree with your viewpoint about real names, but I have a different take on the Leverage Sophie example: to me it has seemed that people are saying that she seems to be different people in different times and places, and they are wondering which of those--symbolized by the name used--is the real one. That might not be any more pleasing to you--because isn't she always real?--but I think it's a bit deeper.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Well, if we're talking about narrative, I wouldn't bother having Ed change to Nathan unless there was some kind of interesting reason for it. :-) In real life, sure. It's not necessarily a big deal.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Not actually a secret name, but now I'm thinking about the character info encoded in who calls Lymond "Francis" in Dorothy Dunnett's books. It's a publicly-known name, but the number of people who use it is vanishingly small, and therefore significant when it happens. (Though it doesn't always mean the same thing, coming from different people. Sybilla's use of her son's given name and Margaret Lennox's use? So not the same.)

But I just find names fascinating, period. Secret names, alternate names, names with literal meaning, names with allusive meaning, people changing their names, etc. Names! Everything about them! It is one of my Things.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah well, that I understand. The intricacies of who actually calls me Marissa instead of Mris or Mrissa: that often means a personality thing about them.

[judith-dascoyne.livejournal.com]

My take on the season 4 Leverage "Sophie's name" arc has more to do with inclusion of the rest of the team and punishing Nate for not remembering any number important (or what ever Sophie is considering important this episode) events.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

They all tie together, for me. I don't disagree with you that the name a person chooses to go by is very important (and in many cases, more important than the name they didn't choose), but that's just one part of the whole broad spectrum of name-related games you can play, and the whole spectrum is very shiny to me.

[ckd]

The one place where True Name-ism worked for me was Vernor Vinge's "True Names".

Of course, that's because the situation was that a True Name was relevant in the world where the government could come find you and the name they knew you by was a form of power that affected you directly.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

The obsession with what someone's legal name used to be seems fairly silly in the context as you describe it-- I can see it being a Plot Thing in a clues to a shady past sort of way, but that's not necessarily a plot I'd be vastly interested in, either.

But the secret/true name thing always made sense to me, in that it's related to the way there are actually a great many variants on you. (the hypothetical you, not Mriss in particular) There's the you that you think of inside your head. There are the yous that your friends & family members see in their heads which (one hopes, with the right sort of friends) are quite similar but never completely congruent because they're not *there* for everything. (And conversely, sometimes they're a little more true that your self-image, because they have better perspective on some things.) And there are the yous that the people you know a little bit or the ones you pass in the street once who happen to like your coat come up with, which won't encompass most of the "real" you, if indeed they've got any at all.

Anyway, my concept of the "true name" thing is that it's the way of describing the theoretical truth at the heart of one's identity, and therefore possibly sympathetic magicking someone without having a very clear or close notion of what that identity is. Or how the god who can see through all of it thinks of you, or whatever.

I think this can (presupposing the right magical framework) coexist perfectly well in the same world in which someone can have as many "real" names as they want. (I've got four, only three of which are presently on my driver's license, plus at least two more I'll answer to if you pronounce them right, plus at least three others that I'd probably look up for except that they're out of my weird childhood mythology and nobody else knows them but me.)

[rose-lemberg.livejournal.com]

It's not easy for everyone to change their name and have the change accepted. For example, I have been misnamed at birth because my parents were trying to protect me from antisemitism. I was named after my great-grandmother, who - also for reasons of antisemitism and societal pressure during the time of the Russian Revolution and later, has changed her name three times. Even though I was named after her, but the name they gave me was completely different from her names(but with an understanding that I was named after her).

I hated my legal name, and from very early age, name-play became a part of my identity. My parents were well aware of my name issues (in fact, it has been extensively discussed between them without my knowledge). When my family immigrated to Israel, nobody wanted to call me by my birth name - there was a sense that immigrants *must* change their names to a Hebrew variant in order to fit in. I have not changed my name then, because the names people insisted I should adopt all annoyed me and the variants of my great-grandmother's name I had in mind were not acceptable somehow. My mother even dragged me to a rabbi for consultation (why?!).

I finally legally changed my name in 1997, and my family did not accept the change. My father still calls me by my birth name, while my mother does not call me by any name. My genre name (Rose) is yet another of my great-grandmother's names. IRL I answer to both my current legal name and Rose, and in my mind both are associated with my great-grandmother. My birth name has no relation to me whatsoever.

That said, because I come from a different country, I get constantly asked "How come you have a name like this? What was/is your real name? What is your Russian name?" To which I have learned to answer "It's a long story." It's really upsetting, but it happens to me very often.

In addition, I have been given a new name for almost every new language I learned, most of them variants of my legal name and Rose.

Because my name issues are fairly complicated, very early on I became fascinated with names - both in the sense of onomastics, and names-as-magic. I enjoyed Ursula Le Guin's true names in the Earthsea series, but when I think about my own situation, I cannot imagine having a True Name; in fact, I am lately often feeling like I have no "true name" at all - it is malleable.

I have naming magic in my worlds. Deepnames are not true names; they are neurological entities that can be manifested through language, and not everybody has them. They are more akin to tools or extra limbs, but they do affect identity.

[moiread]

Not relevant but related: Last night I caught myself introducing myself as "Michelle" to someone I really dislike. I don't know when I started using the blech throwaway not-me version of my name as a kind of psychological barrier between me and icky people (or even just people I'm not sure about) but apparently now that's a thing that I do. It makes total sense, emotionally, but I still think it's funny as hell. It made everyone at Rae's do a double-take.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I do the same thing with Catherine. Catherine is both professional me and me when I don't care enough about you to correct you. Not at the same time, though.

[nenya_kanadka]

This makes perfect sense to me. I have at least two variants on my legal name, which are pronounced the same but spelled differently. People at work do not get the "friends and family" spelling; instead they get the one I kind of dislike. It's a way to have a name to answer to that doesn't let them at the soft squishy underside of the "real me," in case of ugly employment drama.

(Meanwhile, to everyone including my girlfriend and (occasionally) mother, I'm also Nenya. Switching from that to legal!name gives me whiplash at times. I often feel more at home as Nenya, because I do a lot of things while wearing that name that are emotionally important to me. On the gripping hand I've several other fannish-space names, with their own nuances and associations. Who calls me what says more about them than about me, in general, though.)