Of Clones and Namesakes
When I “Google” my name it brings up a Jessica Daniels who is the “Exotic Goddess of New Orleans” (a drag queen, I think). I assure you we are not the same person, yet there is still the slight eeriness and connection one feels with a namesake– the Freudian uncanny of the doppleganger. Throughout the class we’ve looked at the importance of names in the various books- the Invisible Man’s lack of a name (and fake, assigned name), Jack’s switch to J.A.K. Gladney, “Miss Lonelyhearts,” but what connection does this have to Ishiguro’s clone-world? The names in Never Let Me Go are bland enough so that they lack association and reinforce the anonymity of being a clone, but this bothers me because it suggests that the repetition of names represents a repetition in other features, personality traits, etc. I long ago made the distinction to go by Jess, not Jessie, but is anyone else wondering/worried about the definitive nature of names and the potential for identity ambiguity?
This was inspired by a book featuring art made by 11 different Jens (Jen, plural ?):
http://www.book-by-its-cover.com/fineart/jen-11
-Jess
Jess–
Yes, I’ve often thought about my name and what it might mean with respect to my individuality. My first name is foreign everywhere: even in India, people look at me quizzically the first time they meet me and ask, “Nupur–is that an American name?” I have to repeatedly assure them that it’s not. Anyway, I think it’s left me in a very unique position, since I am, for the most part, the only Nupur that anyone has ever met, and a lot of the time, it makes me memorable (especially when I introduce myself as “Nupur! It’s like super but with an ‘N!’”–which I do out of necessity, not as a way to flirt). When I Google “Nupur Shridhar,” the only thing that comes up is me.
I didn’t realize just how strongly I identified with my name until my junior year of high school when ANOTHER Nupur came to my tiny little suburban hometown. Granted, her name was spelled Noopur (uglier, I know), but I remember feeling threatened in some really strange way, like she was going to be riding on the coattails of my stellar high school career (WHAT stellar high school career, I now ask myself) or going to become my friends’ “favorite” Nupur. I guess I just thought that having two people with the same really unique name in a place like Malvern that was so homogenous to begin with was just begging for comparisons. Luckily, Noopur moved back to Pittsburgh after junior year, and even when she was around, everyone continually referred to her in conversation as “the other Nupur” (a fine example of Othering?), and looking back, I feel really bad for that. So what if I was the Nupur that got to Malvern first? Noopur deserved her own identity (though maybe she did form one by joining every club or team that I hadn’t–that much I remember). Still: I felt threatened by this completely different combination of genetic material and memory in a way I never would have if her name hadn’t also been mine. I think about what that might mean often (which is to say, whenever I remember Noopur).
I think equally problematic is the notion of having one’s name taken away. No marriage or civil union is going to convince me to change my last name–and it wasn’t until last summer, which I spent mostly with graduate students who were busy getting married, that I remembered that society expects (in some places, expected) women to change their last names at that time. That’s nonsense. I’ve thought of myself as Nupur Shridhar for nearly two decades and no one is going to take that away from me.
Another thing I’ve been thinking about recently is how names, more and more, are becoming sounds as opposed to remaining words with distinct meanings. “Nupur” means a particular type of anklet that’s worn by Indian dancers during religious ceremonies. Names like “Kathy” and “Tommy” and “Ruth” seem really far removed from any such definitions–or at least, they’re far enough removed that we’d have to look them up to find out what they mean (this website http://www.babynames.com/Names/name_display.php?id=2072 seems to be telling me that “Kathy” means “pure” in English, but Kathy does NOT mean pure in MY vocabulary). Names in third-world cultures still seem strongly linked to that culture’s vocabulary in a way that American/English names no longer seem to be. Granted, there are exceptions–Hope, Chastity, Grace–but this new tendency to make names out of sounds seems very interesting, given how much value we assign our names in the first place.
Names seem remarkably separate from individuals, in this sense. As was pointed out to me yesterday (thanks, Sarah), even authors–whose names are invariably associated with their works–remain, to the reader, just a name: at the end of NEVER LET ME GO, I don’t know any more or less about Ishiguro than I did at the beginning of the book, but I know that he wrote the book and that he was the laborer whose efforts I’m now consuming. What would Marx say about that? I think it’s that capitalism prevents us from ever really associating the laborer with the fruits of his/her labor, but perhaps we should just forgive this particular aspect of mass production because it’s allowed Ishiguro’s ideas to spread so far, so effectively. I’m grateful that Ishiguro wrote this book, and I’m sure he’s a man worth knowing, but maybe, in order to properly consume an idea, just knowing that someone made it is enough. I don’t know–I’m still forming my opinions on this last bit.
Sorry for how long this ended up.
–Nupur
I agree that Jess raises a good point here. I remember picking up the local newspaper one day and being shocked to read that another Nicole Dupuis had been arrested and sent to prison one town over from mine. Of course, this immediately sparked my curiosity regarding the prevalence of my cherished name. Several hours and multiple Google sessions later, I was rather disappointed to discover that Nicole Dupuis is an almost comically common name—not only in the States, but especially in Canada and France. In such a way, my very name became a commodity, a widely distributed item subject to the processes of value and convertibility. Like Ishiguro, I have noticed that Perec also employs the technique of bestowing characters with dull names so as to reinforce their anonymity. Jerome and Sylvie are purposely never given a surname—if they were, this might attribute too much to their individualism. This also leads me to question Invisible Man’s motives for refusing to reveal his name. If we live in a world where our very names reinforce our anonymity, if not simply due to the fact that everyone has a name, might not having a name make one more of an individualist? Just something to consider.
Finally, this concern over the mass replication of names is certainly not limited to the sphere of our blog. There is an obsession in our modern culture with inventing increasingly obscure baby names, and I pity the poor children who end up with some of these gems. Much of this craze can be attributed to high-profile celebrities, who must believe that an exotic name will guarantee their child immortality. For example:
Gwyneth Paltrow named her daughter “Apple”;
Former Spice Girl Geri Haliliwell named her daughter “Blueberry Madonna”;
….and my personal favorite, electric guitarist Frank Zappa named his three children “Moon Unit,” “Dweezil,” and “Diva Muffin.”
Diva Muffin? Really?
Apparently, our fear of losing our identities beneath the façade of a “common” name is having dire ramifications.
There are apparently Ashley McDonnell’s who live in Phoenix and Scarbourgh. Scarbourgh. That just sounds cool. Oh, and apparently I’m a photographer. Funny, I don’t know anything about photography. I always hated how everyone was named Ashley. My mom was like “oh, but I love that name.” And I just think “yeah, you and tens of thousands of other Americans.” But my best friend of whom I was always jealous of is named Jessica. Jessica was the number one popular name in 1990, while Ashley was number two (I can’t even have a better name then her… It was my fate to be lower than her). I so do love babynames.com and http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/.
But I think names do have something to do with identity. In “Never Let Me Go,” as Nupur already mentioned, it seems that names like Tommy and Kathy have nothing to do with much of anything. But I’m also fascinated by their lack of last names. Kathy is simply Kathy H. A first name is something given to you, but a last name is something that’s supposed to be passed down. But since they’re clones, whose name would they assume? They’re created and altered beings. The names in Never Let Me Go seem to mean nothing because the characters have bland personalities and have stunted development. The only endearing thing that comes out of the names in “Never Let Me Go” is Tommy’s nicknaming of Kathy, shortening it to “Kath.” This shows some level of emotional attachment between Tommy and Ruth. (Or maybe it’s just because guys shorten all names to one syllable. Has anyone else ever noticed that? I don’t know, at least, on all the guy hockey teams I’ve ever been on, all the guys and the coaches just call me “Ash.” And they all had shortened names, too. And we would call some people by their last name and others by their first depending on which was shorter/sounded cooler. Yeah…)
(The most ridiculous name I’ve ever heard someone want to name their child was 4ever. Yes, really. I heard this awhile ago. But the government fought the name because it had a numeral in it. Go figure.)
Final random comment: I wrote a mildly silly novella for my senior graduation project last year about a guy named Ice and a girl named Snow. You do not know the immense fun I had coming up with lots of pun-stuff for their names. Naturally, Ice’s friends constantly sang Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” to him. Now how would that mess with your mind?
-A.M.
P.S.- My boyfriend just sent me this link: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/search-for-me-on-google.html You can control what comes up when people Google your name! How creepy is that?
How would you guys feel about the existence of a marginal, but nonetheless lucrative industry in name-giving? Some South Korean parents pay large sums to consult a ‘professional’ name-giver about the most fitting name for their child, which, allegedly, can exert significant influence over his/her destiny. (For instance, my grandfather had originally named my aunt ‘Eun-Young,’ but a ‘professional’ name-giver claimed that this name was ‘unlucky’ and would leave my aunt infertile. My grandparents were naturally alarmed by this news and had her name changed to ‘Hee Sun.’ And, by the way, if you were curious, she still did not bear any children!) While the exact process remains something of a mystery to myself, I do know that the child’s birth date, among other personal details, figures in the calculations to arrive at the best-fit name. While my Korean name was also determined in this manner, the commodification of names seems completely irrational to me. It’s hard to comprehend how something so constitutive of one’s identity should first be purchased.