Iadmit I have a ridiculous name, but I’ll explain that in a bit, because before I can I have to write about the weird phenomenon of “naming”, because human beings are, as far as I can tell, the only animals that name things.

When I was a kid a went to Sunday School a few times. I don’t remember much. I remember the pastor’s daughter was real cute and liked to flirt. It was so innocent and made me feel weird inside, but in a happy way. I’m pretty sure the only reason I came back for a few months was to see her.

The little Bible lesson that day was on the initial innocence of Adam and Eve and something about “naming of the animals”. I guess God would bring the creatures around and the humans would name them and whatever they named them, that was it and even God had to live with the word “platypus”.

As I walked home I thought about two things back and forth…the girl’s innocent and sweet smile, and about all the pets in the neighborhood and their names and how we make up words. I had no idea, at the time, how complicated and dangerous both of those could be in the adult world.

But let’s assume, for the moment, that there was either an Adam and Eve, or at least at some point along the way some evolving human beings began it assign “meaning” to their grunts and mouthings and this primitive “naming” stuck and became normative among them.

Obviously some mistakes were made. I mean “ostrich” sounds like what you look at when you see one, but what about something like “pig”?

How can you use a tiny word “pig” to describe a 600 pound swine. “Swine” is not even big enough. Just say the word a few times. It just doesn’t fit does it?

It’s like a one-word oxymoron, and you’re not supposed to be able to do that. “Pig” sounds more like a very small rodent or a type of bird.

Of course, that’s just in English. But it’s notable that Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary, defines “slang” (a different type of naming) in a derogatory way as “The grunt of the human hog (Pignoramus intolerabilis) with an audible memory.”

But what’s up with that Ambrose? Certainly “Pigoramus” really fits the animal better than the tiny word “pig”.

Apparently the devil has no sense of humor.

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People name their children, businesses and pets and just about everything else they can see, can’t see, or can possibly imagine. Sometimes it sticks to something tangible, at other times it is just one big “Snipe Hunt”.

There is also the whole phenomenon of “branding” which as far as I can tell started with a hot iron on farm animals like a cow or pignoramus (sorry, I’ve made the switch for good), and has now become the dominant concern of most corporations, even more than the quality of their products. We have all manner of brands for products we know really nothing about (like say, er, “Nutrasweet”)

But that’s for another time. I want to focus today on simple naming alone.

My name has a long history and will probably have a long future. It feels “real”. If anything, it is I who am a piece of fiction.

My loving parents named me Maugham in honor of W. Somerset Maugham. They were young pseudo-intellectuals who had never hear the novelist’s name pronounced correctly until long after it was too late. Thus, my name comes out “Maug-um” rather than “Mahm” – a fact for which I am eternally grateful.

Malraux is a tough name to grow up with. The ignorant say “Mal-rocks” instead of “Mal-row”. Others aware of “the Malraux”, a very distant relative of mine, wonder why I am not a better writer. I just tell them the bloodline has thinned.

When I was ten years old, I remember standing by some baseball bleachers with a bat in my hands. For some reason I started reciting my name over and over gain: “Maugham Malraux, MAUGHAM-MALRAUX-MAUGHAMALROW-MAUGHUMALROWMOGUMALROW…”etc.

I repeated my own name over and over until it became a foreign sort of sound—like something a tribal chief would say in a scary jungle flick.

A few months later, I actually saw a scary jungle flick on the late night movies. In the film, the wife of a dictatorial archeologist acquired a ring which ensured her immortality.

Years before, she had exchanged vows (a very definite type of language), had been given a ring and had taken his name as her own.

But things had soured and now all she had to do was punch a male at the base of the neck with the new ring, and it would extract an undefined substance (like, er, Nutrasweet?) and it would keep her eternally young. The only side effect was the death of the guy she punched.

She made a pact with the king of the tribe who offered one of his male servants for the eternal life ritual.
But no. Instead, she intended to use it on her heartless little husband who had dragged her all around the world digging up dead cultures when all she wanted was to live in a live one.

And this is where it gets weird, and I swear this is true. The tribesmen brought the struggling archaeologist before the chief, and the man yelled, “You’ll never get away with this!! You let me GO!”

“AACK!!” screamed the chief, “MAUGHAM MALROW, MAUG-AM MALROW!!” This was, apparently the tribal command for the man to bound so his wife could give him the second ring of their marriage.

Which she did.

So what’s in a name? Depends on what you’re named, and who takes your name, I guess.

That should have given me significant clues into the power of words, and perhaps the dangers of human relationships (you might get “two-ringed”, which I think should become new slang…snort).

But it didn’t. That would come later.

 

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