Naming names

What’s in a name? I can’t remember how we started talking about it, but M and I talked about names on the way home from work yesterday. Maybe it started when M asked what I thought the most common name in the world could be. A name that was common across languages, so to speak. I thought about it, but my answer was that although many names might exist or have variants across different cultures or languages, I don’t think it is possible to say that these different versions would exist across all cultures.

Take the name Michael, for instance. My Great Australian and New Zealand Book of Baby Names* (by Cecily Dynes, Angus and Robertson, 1984) tells me that Michael is Hebrew for “who is like the lord?”, and that this question is what the Archangel Michael asked “after he blew his trumpet”. Apparently Michael “has been one of the most popular names in Australia and New Zealand since about 1870, with waves of added popularity in the forties…, the fifties… and the sixties and seventies.” (p.124) What I like about this book is the fact that Ms Dynes lists many different forms of the name: Micah, Michan, Michel, Michele, Miguel, Mihael, Mikael, Mikail, Mikel, Mikhail, Mikkel, Mikko, Miklos, Mischa, Mishael, Mychal, along with possible nicknames: Mike, Mickey, Mick, Micko, Mischa, Mikey.

Looking at all the versions of Michael out there, it seems to me they are all from cultures or language communities for which Old Testament of the Bible is either relevant or has some connection. So while there are Irish (Michan), Spanish (Miguel), Arabic (Mikail), Russian (Mikhail), Finnish (Mikko), Hungarian (Miklos), and Jewish (Mishael) versions, there is no indigenous version of Michael in any Chinese dialect, or in Australian Aboriginal languages, for example. The whole concept of the Archangel Michael is very specific to particular cultures and quite alien to others.

And don’t get me started talking about Chinese names, which are quite different from how Europeans understand names to ‘work’. Or Malay names, which are different again from either European or Chinese names. Or Tamil names, for that matter. And that’s just the cultures that I have some knowledge of! I know I’m generalising a lot here and that there is a lot of variance in names in different European cultures, especially when you start looking at surnames. But surnames are a different kettle of fish again – and many cultures don’t have them either! I think the names from each of these cultures could be the subject of separate posts, really. (But going on and on about names can also be really boring so I won’t go into it here!)

One thing I really love about M – we can have these long, quite involved conversations about almost anything. M is very good at playing the devil’s advocate, so he can happily question my stance on an issue from an ‘opposing’ point of view, even if he actually agrees with me. This can be quite a nice way of clarifying what it is I actually think. Of course sometimes such discourse can point out huge holes in my argument or beliefs as well, which can be very infuriating. Or I start to get so emotionally involved in defending my point of view that I forget that M is just asking what I think.

Poor M probably regretted asking the question in the first place by the time I finished ruminating out loud about names.

*Why are books on names always called Baby Names?? Sure, the person you are naming is going to be a baby at the time, but they will grow up. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just call it a Book of Names?

Categories: names, culture, conversation