". . . I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate . . . For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to."
More thoughts on names and legacy:
One feature of the conventional way of passing along names is that it makes no judgements. It is a piece of one's heritage conveyed without regard to the character of the individuals who have also carried that name. When we attempt to expand our heritage beyond that which has been given us by default, we often run into stories we'd rather not tell and people we'd rather not commemorate.
My mother's maiden name was G., and I have entertained the notion of giving a child the name G. as a middle name, to honor my mother and her history. But her history does not make a happy tale. My mother grew up in a poor farming family. Her family thought she had crazy ideas -- she wanted to go to college and become a teacher. No one in her family had gone to college, and her father certainly did not endorse a daughter going off to get an education. My mother was determined. Without one cent of support from her family, she put herself through college. Working seven part-time jobs and getting the college president to co-sign the loan her father had refused to co-sign, she managed to fund her education at Trenton State College. Her father was convinced that there was only one way a woman could raise the money required; acting on this conviction he accused her of being a whore and disowned her. That and my mother's recollections of child abuse give me the inclination to forget the whole G. lot.
How are subsequent generations to deal with a tale like that? Surely my mother's tale of perserverence deserves commemoration, but that cannot be achieved without pointing out that we are related to some despicable folks. And, privately, I do wonder if the monster has grown more grotesque as the years have passed, so I don't even know what tale to pass on.
Surely not everone else has a Norman Rockwell family tree. What do you do?
Caroline G.-- (nee Caroline Anne K., of Clara Anne G., of Anne Elizabeth C.)