Episode 339: True Names
/What’s in a name? Well, it turns out, a whole lot! We dive into the religious and folkloric origins of the True Name, the fantasy works it inspired, and how names are just as powerful now as they were in the dawn of humanity.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, animal attacks, racism, slavery, and religious persecution.
Housekeeping
- Links: Read more about names in Judaism here, here, and here!
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Listen to Tell Me About It today!
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Transcript
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And this is episode 339, all about True Names. Inspired perhaps Julia by a recent episode?
JULIA: It is indeed. So in our Rumpelstiltskin episode, we talked briefly about True Names, which I think is kind of become a very prominent theme in the kind of current fantasy novel genre, which have all kind of sort of iterated on each other and created this sort of fiction that we now take as fact, which, you know, for me, at least that's interesting and I like that we tend to create our own worlds and our own folklore and stuff like that. But Amanda, like what do you think of when you think of True Names?
AMANDA: I think of some inherent power of cutting through illusion and knowing exactly what the essence of something is. And so that might be a you know, a foe or fairy or a helper, and understanding exactly what they are and therefore having some amount of power over them. It feels to me very related to things like, you know using like blood or hair or some kind of, you know, biological matter to like get at the essence of something. And also maybe about chosen this and chosen names and how we identify ourselves. So this is just full of goodness, and I'm sure many, many JSTOR publications have been written all about it.
JULIA: Oh, I don't doubt that for a second. For me, when I think about True Names, I tend to as a lover of the fantasy genre, I think of Ursula Le Guin and A Wizard of Earthsea. Did you read those books as a kid Amanda?
AMANDA: Not as a kid, but as an adult I have.
JULIA: Ah okay, wonderful. So for people who are not familiar with it, the Earthsea cycle, which we're going to definitely talk a lot about later, kind of seems to have popularized the idea of the True Name in the modern consciousness. But that does raise a question which is, did Le Guin create this idea that like knowing something or someone's name gives you power? Or does it have some sort of religious or mythological origins? And the fact that we are talking about it here on the show, I think it's safe for us to say that there are some origins of I'll be honest, one of my favorite magical tropes. So let's get started, shall we?
AMANDA: Let's do it.
JULIA: So one of the first connections that I made to the nature of the true name seemed to be in my mind, the Greek mystery cults. So as we talked about in some of our it's all Greek to me episodes, the mystery cults of ancient Greece were religious schools that one had to be initiated into in order to worship. And it was kind of characterized by the secrecy around both the initiation and then also the rituals that were performed by those who were initiated into the cult. Perhaps the most well-known of these mystery cults was the Eleusinian mysteries, so they were particularly associated with the worship of Demeter and Persephone. Though as the name implies, the actual like rites, ceremonies, and beliefs were kept secret to all but those who had already made themselves part of the mysteries. Which you know, kind of fun, kind of exciting or kind of like a fun like, ooh, we still don't know exactly what was going on with all those which does indicate pretty good mystery.
AMANDA: Yes, it did.
JULIA: Now among these secrets that were part of the mystery cults were the implied secret names and secret titles for the Goddesses Demeter and Persephone, which in turn gave the initiated a relationship to those Goddesses that otherwise they would not have. So it was said that this connection through the mystery cults to Persephone, who is all about death and rebirth was also related to the eternity of life that flowed from generation to generation, and that because of their worship, the initiates would be rewarded by their goddess in the afterlife.
AMANDA: That's pretty awesome.
JULIA: It is pretty cool. And I really liked this idea of like, yes, because I know Persephone's real name her— her secret name her mystery name, me and my kind they are going to get really honored by the Goddess when we ended up dead.
AMANDA: Yeah, it's like a form of currency or favor where you know being trusted with the secret means that you have some amount of you know, it's like a card you can show and say yes, I was trustworthy, and I was deemed trustworthy.
JULIA: Yes. And it's going to be really interesting because we'll talk about this transition between the mythological and religious implications to the folklore traditions around true names. And a lot of it has to do with early on, it's all about worship. And then later on as we become more modernized, it's all about control. So I don't think that anyone who was worshipping as part of the Eleusinian Mysteries was like, ah, yes, with this secret true name of Persephone and Demeter, I will have control and dominion over the goddesses and life and death itself. No, obviously, that's not what they thought. But it's a really interesting kind of dichotomy between how we go from worship to usage.
AMANDA: That's the human story, isn't it, right? Where we begin by worshipping gods to asking for their favor, to begging for their favor, to trying to control them or fate itself?
JULIA: Yes, yes, indeed. And we'll talk a little bit about that later as we—as we talk about that transition. But I also want to talk about ancient Egypt. Because in ancient Egypt, it was believed that if you destroyed all records of someone's name, their ca, which is one of the principal aspects of the soul would just no longer exists, which is a huge deal, especially given what we know about the Egyptian afterlife, right? So there is evidence that for some of the more unpopular pharaohs, such as Akhenaten, they had this attempted on them so that they wouldn't be remembered and their ca would be destroyed. So you had to be extremely unpopular as a ruler for someone to be like, ah, you know, what, what if we destroyed part of his soul and no one would ever remember him, that's how bad of a ruler he was.
AMANDA: Damn, huge deal.
JULIA: Huge deal, huge deal. This is also super relevant to the afterlife. The Book of the Dead lists the names of the guardians of the gates to the afterlife so that by knowing them, the deceased can gain power over these guardians and be allowed to pass through the gates into the afterlife. So the idea of making sure you know the names of all of these caretakers so that you can go past. It feels very similar to like, if you live in a apartment building that has a doorman, like making sure you know all their names so that you can always like rely on them to be like, ah, yes, I know you go on ahead to your apartment or afterlife.
AMANDA: Exactly. Like you should be nice to people just to be a good person, but also it's very convenient to befriend the people with real power, which are the people you know that others overlook.
JULIA: Yeah, that is true. Social engineering is the greatest form of heists Amanda, so.
AMANDA: That's what I heard.
JULIA: Know that security team, no, those guardians of the gate to the afterlife, and you'll be good to go.
AMANDA: Exactly right.
JULIA: Also, as I mentioned in the Rumpelstiltskin episode as well, it wasn't just mortals that had connections to true names, but the gods as well. So the Goddess Isis, for example, was able to trick the God Ra into giving her an immense amount of power over him. She did this by creating a snake with a venom that only she could counteract, and then had the viper bite Ra and being a god, he couldn't die, but he was in tremendous pain and was really suffering. And finally to end that he exchanged his true name for the antidote. So basically giving Isis extreme power over him. Which bold move,solid move by ISIS there, for sure.
AMANDA: Yeah, it might not hold up in court, but it— we don't have to because they are the gods.
JULIA: They're the gods. No court is gonna hold them, they're good to go. The interesting part as well is you remember, Ma'at who is the goddess of justice and balance. She was said to never be actually called by her true name and it was never actually written down for fear that because she is the goddess of balance, control over her true name would create discord in the world.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: Yeah. So imagine your name is so important and so strong, that no one ever actually wrote down the actual name of it. They only just call you Ma'at because it means balance.
AMANDA: I don't have to imagine it because it is true in Judaism. I know we're gonna get to that later.
JULIA: Yes, yes. I can't wait to talk about it, yes. Similarly, in Sumerian theology, it was believed that knowing all of one's names meant you could exert power over that person. So the Mesopotamian God of Creation Marduk, and also the God of the city of Babylon, was said to have over 50 names. Because having that many names meant that no one could know his true name and thus he could not be overpowered, which is a big deal. It would be a lot of trial and error I think if you wanted to really gain some control over him.
AMANDA: It's like a you know, 10 or 12-digit like lock, it's just at a certain point, it's not worth the squeeze.
JULIA: Yeah, you're like, okay, well, you know my password for my email is a random number and letters combination that no one's ever gonna guess, that a computer came up for me.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So like, what do I do now?
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: That was the Babylonian equivalent.
AMANDA: Yeah, Babylonians were making and breaking codes way before the computer.
JULIA: I also really liked this because the 50 names that were chosen for Marduk were also a representation of what he symbolized, which also gave him specific importance to the Babylonians. So not only were these names a way of making sure he was never controlled, but they were also practical like letting you know what aspects he created and what he represented.
AMANDA: That's always good. Just embed some—some knowledge and some records into it.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. You know, they don't just have to be the randomized code that the password generator made for me, they can have purpose to them, which I like. Circling back to ancient Greece, Plato wrote in his dialog which is called Cratylus, about Socrates kind of just opining on something that is similar to true names, though not exact. So Socrates talks about the correctness of names, quote-unquote, “the correctness” of names, which he makes it differentiation between, quote, “the conventional name, and the natural name.” So Socrates believed that when things are given names, it is because that name reflects some of the essence of this thing, right? So an example of this would be soft, things often have soft names. Whereas liquid things often have names that kind of reflect their liquid and changeable nature. As he puts it, quote, “the best possible way to speak consists of using names, all or most of which are like the things they name that is are appropriate to them, while the worst is to use the opposite kind of names.”
AMANDA: Okay, so Socrates would be really pissed if I named my like, gigantic you know, Bernese Mountain Dog, Cupcake, for example?
JULIA: Yes, he would be very upset about that. He would be like, but that's not the true name of that dog unless it's a very cuddly dog, Socrates and you don't know.
AMANDA: You don't know.
JULIA: You don't know.
AMANDA: Maybe his personality is a cupcake Socrates, maybe that is the truth of the guy.
JULIA: Maybe he's a cupcake, exactly. A more like practical explanation for that, or to give you an idea of what he was talking about. He basically thinks that like negative words, or words with a negative connotation often share similar sounds. So like in example, in English, snarl, or snake, or snap kind of share that SN noise, SN noise, because their natural name, quote-unquote, “reflects their negative nature.”
AMANDA: I wonder—I wonder what this is like in translation between Greek and English?
JULIA: I don't know Ancient Greek.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So I can't say for certain. But they did use like snake as an example.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: So I imagine that like if you are looking at the translation for what the word snake is, it would also resemble another word that had a negative connotation that had similar sounds to it.
AMANDA: And I have to say one of my very favorite things in the world is onomatopoeia in all languages.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: So the different ways that people represent the sounds of you know, like, wind, whistling, or different kinds of creatures making noise is amazing, because we do like to use words that evoke or represent the thing that we're talking about.
JULIA: Yeah. My favorite is when you're learning a new language and they teach you all the animal noises, and you're like—
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: —oh, so instead of cockadoodledoo, in French, it's Cocorico, like what?
AMANDA: Yeah, I feel where they coming from, yeah.
JULIA: Yeah, sure. No, that makes sense, but like, you know it's just so funny to be like, no, that's the universal noise that animals make, and they're like, no, no, no.
AMANDA: No, no, no?
JULIA: In this language, a little bit different.
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: Digging into indigenous traditions, Inuit tradition, it places a lot of importance on naming and there is a distinction made between [14:18] which are personal names, and [14:21] which are nicknames. So two people who share the same name often share a bond, especially if someone is a namesake to another, which I think is really interesting, and I think is also something that we're going to touch upon when we talk about Judaism a little bit. But names can also be given to prevent misfortune which I think is really interesting. So if a child is sick, the child's name would be changed because an individual's name is supposed to be a source of power. So according to Mariano [14:51], who is a Inuit elder and also an author who wrote about this practice, he says, quote, “If there was a real sickness in a person, that person might be carrying a name that is not right for him.” The Angakkuq or the shaman wouldn't be aware of this, but the [15:07] or his helping spirit would find out that the person shouldn't have that name and it would be changed. Which I think is like a really interesting practice like, imagine that your name is what brings you like health and power and is like, basically your life force. So changing it when you're sick or frail, or something like that might be able to change the life force that you're carrying with you.
AMANDA: It's amazing, yeah.
JULIA: It's not so cool.
AMANDA: I know, I've thought about how differently I would be perceived if my name was different. And just the mental baggage I carry around with me based on what my name is and how people perceive it, and how you know, common or uncommon it is. And it makes total sense, like it's, you know, it's really the lens through which the world sees you, and you see the world. So all of this makes utter sense in my mind.
JULIA: Yeah, no, I love that. And I think that i—we'll talk about kind of modern interpretations of the true name a little bit later. But I think that is 100% true. Like your name really does often indicate what people think of you before they have an actual impression of who you are and for better or for worse in a lot of cases, so.
AMANDA: Totally.
JULIA: There are quite a few stories regarding names in both Christianity and Judaism. One of the first that comes to mind, for me at least is in Genesis where Adam is created and then given dominion over all of the animals, and part of that dominion is being tasked with naming all of them. So it's really not that hard to extrapolate from there, that by naming them, that is how Adam gains control over them. So the idea that he gives their name, and therefore he has control over them, I think is a really interesting interpretation of Genesis.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Additionally, there's the story of Jacob wrestling, the angel, which is also described in Genesis and the angel refuses to give his name to Jacob, but instead blesses Jacob with a new name Israel. And that is supposed to represent his struggle quote, "for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed". Which I think is a really interesting way of being like, okay, I'm not going to give you the power of my name, but I'm going to bless you with a new name that will give you power in return.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: Now, Amanda, I know that Judaism has a lot of traditions around names and naming. Do you mind talking a little bit about that for me?
AMANDA: Yes. So this is something that we covered often and returned back to a lot in my conversion class, which as in all things, Judaism is really dependent on your tradition and who you're learning with, and you know, how your specific version of Judaism shows up in your life. But the— the thing that I knew about Judaism, even before becoming Jewish was that some Jews don't write down the name of God. And that God is referred to by many different names in Judaism, and you know I'd heard things about like why that is. But digging into it in class, as usual, it is way more like specific and scholarly than I realized, which is like the most important and the name of God that is used most often in Judaism is called the Tetragrammaton, which is the four-letter name of God. And you are actually forbidden from pronouncing that name outside the temple in Jerusalem, the original one that was, you know, destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed again. And so we actually don't even know how that word was said.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Because you couldn't say it outside of it. So people don't actually know. People have guesses about how it was pronounced, but most often in prayers and things like that, we use words like Adonai, which means my lord or characteristics of God like Elohim, or like merciful, you know, words like that. And some people even, you know, put a dash in the words God or Lord when writing in English, so you're sort of like carrying forward the spirit of that law in a version of Judaism that doesn't have like a central temple to do all of our traditions in anymore.
JULIA: I really liked that, because that's something that I know is very common in a lot of different religions and religious practices. I know in ancient Greece, for example, a lot of times they would not refer to the gods and goddesses by their true name, but rather like an a epithet like my lord, or, you know, a my god or something like that. So that's really cool, and I'd like to see the kind of translation of those things together.
AMANDA: Yeah. And it's poetic, right?
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And like will leads you to talk about the different qualities of what you think you know a force or the spirit of the universe you know, or God would be depending on how you think of it. But the other part that was very important to us in conversion class was all about choosing your Hebrew name.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And it is one of those things that's not like in you know, in the Bible and the Torah but instead like a thing that's become common in Rabbi. So like this is a good idea, you should do this.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Which is giving Jews Hebrew names because again, being a religion, almost entirely practice in Diaspora, often people would take local names either to you know, be safe or to, you know, blend in, or eventually, just because that's what their parents wanted them to be called, but also have a Hebrew name. And you also honor the people's parents by saying, you know like in other languages, it's you know, your Hebrew name, and then you say, you know, son of this person, daughter of this person, and you name both parents as well. And for me, if I ever were to sign you know, like a Jewish text, like, you know, the Ketubah, the marriage contract or anything else, or be like honored or named in synagogue, my name would actually be daughter of Abraham and Sarah, who were the first Jews.
JULIA: Makes a lot of sense.
AMANDA: Which is very exciting. And so when I was choosing my name, you know, you talk to your Rabbi, you think of something that again, tries to represent you. Because as in many other cultures, you know, names have significance, names represent us, their you know, ideally supposed to kind of prophesize like the, you know, the kind of person you want to be, the kind of life that you wanted your kid to live, or you want yourself to live if you're naming yourself. And so I chose Deborah, which is the Hebrew name that is translated to English as Deborah, who was a, like, ancient Israeli judge, and, you know, like a badass lady, and also translates to bees—
JULIA: Bees.
AMANDA: —which is spiritually and you know, personally significant to me. But there's so much there are traditions depending again, on where your family is, from around you know, naming kids after family members who had been deceased, around even not assigning a child a name until a certain period of time has passed, or if someone has died recently, hoping that that sort of confuses the Angel of Death to like not come and take them, which is really cool. You can also like rename people when they're sick to try, you know, to like, help toward getting them better and all kinds of fabulous stuff. There are you know, names mean things, and speaking and putting words makes things real in Judaism in a way that I find really incredible that I am still you know, learning about and I'm sure we could do an entire episode about. So I will include some links around the power of names and naming in Judaism in the description if anybody else is curious about learning. But I just want to know, from other Jews, like how—how do you think about names, and how were the power of names sort of showing up in your life when you were growing up?
JULIA: Awesome, please send us in that information. The one that you touched on that I stumbled upon during my research was the one where you don't name someone after a living relative because in case the Angel of Death comes looking for them, they don't choose the younger child. And I think that's like such an interesting and great way and like kind of the opposite of most Christian beliefs where it's like, yeah, you want to be the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, you know, Benjamin whatever.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And so yeah, it's super, super interesting. I love that. Thank you for—thank you for talking about it, Amanda.
AMANDA: You got it.
JULIA: Well, before we dive into kind of the transition from religious practices to folkloric tradition, which I know a lot of you are probably going to recognize, why don't we grab a refill?
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
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JULIA: So Amanda, for this episode, I really wanted to break out a variation of one of my favorite cocktails, which is the Last Word
AMANDA: Is this going to be called the Last Name?
JULIA: It is called the Last Name.
AMANDA: Yay!
JULIA: Dang it, you got me. So I actually picked this one. One, it is kind of a variation of like I said, my favorite cocktail of all time, which is the Last Word, and two, I picked this one Amanda because I knew it's going to combine things that both you and I really love. So the Last Name. First off, you'll need equal parts of four ingredients because that is like the holy not trinity, but the like holy ratio, the sacred ratio of the last word, it is four ingredients always and it is always a equal amount of each. So for the Last Name, you're going to need three-quarter ounces of mezcal, green chartreuse, Aperol, and lime juice.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And I think that swapping in the Mezcal and the Aperol for the gin and maraschino liqueur, actually provides a really nice balance and a bit more of a complex flavor that highlights both the smokiness of the Mezcal, the bite of the lime and of course the herbal notes of the chartreuse.
AMANDA: Delish. I would love to share one with you.
JULIA: Oh my god anytime friend, anytime. I make them next time you're at my house, like we'll just do it.
AMANDA: Yay!
JULIA: We get some of that illegal Mezcal from local Greenpoint. Yep, which they sell at my local liquor store, which I am obsessed with and we'll just throw these all together. I've got like half a bottle of green Chartreuse that needs use in any way.
AMANDA: I love it. I never met a drink involving a great deal of lime juice that I didn't like, you know.
JULIA: That's fair. And like, I think it like three-quarters of an ounce is like the perfect amount of lime juice for a cocktail in general. I like my cocktail super limey, but also, like, I will squeeze an entire lime typically into any cocktail that I'm making and I'm just like, mmm, perfect.
AMANDA: It's like how people use garlic cloves, I'm like, mmm, two limes when you mean half an ounce, exactly.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. You—I almost find that it's unlucky to add the actual amount of garlic that the recipe calls for. I always add like two or three more cloves than are called for.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Just because I'm like, I don't think you know. Like, Listen, you are a professional recipe creator/chef, I understand that that's probably true. But you don't—my blood—my blood, it runs this way.
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: Runs and It smells like garlic, so.
AMANDA: The garlic calls it to me, I need it.
JULIA: The garlic calls to me, my ancestors love it and want it for me, and I appreciate that they speak to me through cutting open to a whole head and being like,—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —most of this should go in. Amanda speaking of names, oftentimes in mythology referring to as I mentioned before, the gods by their true names meant that you were either evoking them, or at the very least were like making yourself noticed by them.
AMANDA: Yes, you're sending up a little ping to the you know GPS, saying hi, I noticed you and you are going to notice me back.
JULIA: Which oftentimes, you don't necessarily want the attention of the gods. Especially in mythologies like Greek mythology and stuff like that, right?
AMANDA: Almost always.
JULIA: So often instead, they would be referred to by a title or by an epithet. And it's something that we talked a lot about in our it's all Greek to me episodes, and it's Norse, of course, and it's also something that we've talked about in Fairy traditions as well. Often they refer to fairies as the good folk, people appease, the fair folk, etc, right? So I want to play a little game.
AMANDA: I'm ready.
JULIA: So I am going to list off a couple of translated epithets for a god or goddess, don't worry, it's only going to be once we've done on the show before.
AMANDA: Few.
JULIA: And I want you to take your best guess at which god or goddess I'm referring to. And to make it simple, we're just going to do the Greek pantheon. So it's all ones that you know, I promise.
AMANDA: Wonderful.
JULIA: So we're gonna do five let's see how you do.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Number one, she who fights in front of the city, the industrious, the unwary-ing, and bright-eyed.
AMANDA: Okay, so fighting in front of a city—
JULIA: Fighting in front then comma of the city.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Comma, the industrious.
AMANDA: Of the city to me means Athena, that's my guess.
JULIA: You got it. Yay!
AMANDA: [33:04]
JULIA: So it fighting in front obviously her aspect of war, she being the goddess of Athens is also super important. The industrious being her craftsmanship, and the unwearying again battle reference and bright eyes are also oftentimes referred to as gray-eyed Athena, so—
AMANDA: Fuck yeah, dude. Hell yeah.
JULIA: Alright, number two, this one's pretty easy. You'll—you'll get it by the end, I promise.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Alright. So number one, wide ruling, earthshaker of the horses, a bounding the waves sea resounding.
AMANDA: This is gotta be my man Poseidon.
JULIA: Of course, it's Poseidon, of course. If you don't know the horse stuff, the sea stuff kind of gives it away.
AMANDA: Yes. Earthshaker I also remember with tectonic plates and you know stuff like that.
JULIA: Yes, he wa—he's all about creating earthquakes and stuff like that. There's also another great one for Poseidon where it's like a flows under the ground, but I was like, I don't know if that's going to exactly give it away. I feel like that would be too confusing.
AMANDA: True.
JULIA: So we went with the ones we went with. Alright, this one's a little bit harder. Number three, smile loving for all the folk, the heavenly she who postpones old age, end of the persuasive.
AMANDA: Huh. Smile loving for all the folk. Heavenly, sure they all are. Postponing old age is really interesting to me. That's the one I'm going— I'm gonna grab on to and guess—
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: Aphrodite, because beauty?
JULIA: Nailed it!
AMANDA: Yay!
JULIA: Nailed it! Incredible, you're doing great. I think also the one that gives it away for me is for all of the folk as in like, everyone has relationships and you know, loves in the various ways that Aphrodite provides love for someone even if it isn't romantic or sexual. So I like that one a lot.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: Alright, number four. Shrewd and crafty, of many devices, ingenious, inventive, the suti God, the coppersmith.
AMANDA: Oh, Julia, this has got to be our favorite guy, our favorite metalsmith whose name I am totally forgetting.
JULIA: Hephaestus.
AMANDA: Hephaestus. Oh my god of course how could I? My brain was like trying to mash up H with any way I couldn't get there.
JULIA: No, you're—you were— I—you knew exactly what we were talking about.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: So you were on the money there, I appreciate it. Sometimes there's 12 of them, it's hard to remember.
AMANDA: The city. God, I love you, Hephaestus.
JULIA: City god. Alright, and then the final one that I have here the rich one.
AMANDA: Can I stop you?
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: It's gonna be Hades, all those resources.
JULIA: Oh, yes. You got it, you got it. Let me list all the rest of them.
AMANDA: Give us the whole thing. Yeah.
JULIA: They're so good. So the rich one, he who receives many, which—
AMANDA: Hey.
JULIA: Yeah, eventually he does. He receives every one eventually.
AMANDA: We'll all die one day.
JULIA: The well-intentioned and the subterranean.
AMANDA: Fuck yeah, dude.
JULIA: So cool, right? So freaking cool. Amanda got all five, very proud of you. That's awesome.
AMANDA: Thank you. I'm sorry Hephaestus, I forgot your name, but Julia's got my back.
JULIA: Amanda, great job with the game. We're going to now transition our way from the mythology aspect of names to the slightly more modern folk stories. Now, what's notable about this transition is that in the folk stories, it's less about the knowledge of the Divine and a connection to them in that way, and more about being able to master an obstacle in some way. So obviously, we've chatted on the show about the Aarne-Thompson-Uther-Index, which is used to catalog folktale types. And we mentioned in our Rumpelstiltskin episode, the trope of guessing the helper's name or the name of the helper. Which is specifically defined as stories in which a mysterious and threatening helper is defeated when the hero or heroine discovers his name. Obviously, we covered a ton of those when we were doing our Rumpelstiltskin episode. If you haven't checked that one out yet, check it out, it's a really, really fun one in my opinion.
AMANDA: Yeah, we've learned not to sing your social security number as you go skipping through the forest.
JULIA: A solid suggestion. You never know when a chipmunks going to steal your identity.
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: Yeah, those squirrels you know, they want to open a credit card, but they don't have their own social security number, so they're going to steal mine.
AMANDA: Their fingerprints are so little, they can't even get fingerprinted for a social security number.
JULIA: [37:27] printed. I feel bad now for the squirrels that live in my backyard because they can't get fingerprinted by the US government. Thank you, Amanda.
AMANDA: Sorry, my bad.
JULIA: As you might remember, this quote-unquote “defeat” can often be as simple as the helper running away, as is the case in a couple of the different versions of Rumpelstiltskin. Sometimes it banishes them, which was the case of the Japanese story, the Ogres Bridge.
AMANDA: Yes, that's right.
JULIA: Yes, God, I love that one. And he was just like, I just want to feed my children your eyes is that okay? Can we do that?
AMANDA: That's not—no, okay.
JULIA: No, the Carpenter was not about that.
AMANDA: Well, alright.
JULIA: Did not like that idea very much.
AMANDA: Not my call, but okay.
JULIA: Yeah. Because rather than using true names to kind of evoke a deity, knowing one of these helpers' true names, allows control over them. So this gives more power to mortals who can have dominion over something supernatural, rather than it being kind of the other way around. And I was thinking about this, and I think in Europe at least, I wonder if this has something to do with the spread of Christianity across Europe and the West. And the idea of these quote-unquote, “like pagan spirits, and deities” were portrayed as lesser compared to the power of the Christian God, right? And as followers of Christianity, suddenly these followers have dominion over them, much like Adam had dominion over the animals in the Bible. What do you think about that?
AMANDA: That's really interesting. I think Christianity is really devoted to making humans different and higher than the rest of the world, and that sort of like prosperity, gospel, manifest destiny, like all of these concepts are tied together in a way that kind of flows from you know, you are higher, you are closer to God, and God rewards you and everything else is kind of a resource there for you to make use of.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Again, depending on being very variable as to you know where you are and what you specifically believe. But that's at least how we see it expressed in the US through policy.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And so I think this is —this is probably pretty similar and you know, the project of Christianity, you know, converting and displacing older religions includes like this is the real answer, this is the real truth, this is the real power. I think that hypothesis makes a lot of sense to me.
JULIA: Thank you. There's just be theorizing, I didn't find anything in my research about that. But it makes a lot of sense to me, you know, coming from a Christian and Catholic background like, I be like, oh yeah, that does kind of make sense, and everything I've learned about the spread of Christianity and the lol, it's not pagan, it's fine that makes a lot of sense that suddenly these gods and goddesses and spirits that were once more powerful than humans are now, less so. And I think that's a really interesting way of looking at it.
AMANDA: Indeed.
JULIA: So this power over something by knowing their name kind of lays out the basics of its usage in modern fantasy telling. So the first thing I think of, as I mentioned before, is, of course, Ursula Le Guin and A Wizard of Earthsea. And while I love those books, I don't think that they are exactly the origin of the magic of true names in modern fantasy. Like, certainly Tolkien uses the power of names in Lord of the Rings series. In Lord of the Rings, the dwarves, in particular, keep a secret name that is the private possession of an individual dwarf and is known only to them, which I think is kind of neat and interesting. There are also several instances in the books in which characters are warned about revealing their true names. Though, I think that depending on how you read it, a lot of that might have to do more with like the quest that they're on and the fact that people are trying to stop them from doing the things that they're doing, than the actual danger of a quote-unquote, “true name holding power over someone.”
AMANDA: This clearly has deep roots and folklore, and therefore it's going to have deep roots and fantasy because fantasy writers love folklore. And they love mythology, and they're going to draw from things that make sense to them and find kind of ways to express or interrogate different themes that interest them.
JULIA: Yeah. And as we know, Tolkien drew so much from Norse mythology and from like, Finnish folklore and stuff like that. So it makes a lot of sense that he would include some of these things that have true purpose and value from those mythologies into his writing. Look out for that next time you read a fantasy book being like, hey, this probably comes from somewhere real in the world and I bet I could figure out what that is. So additionally, before Le Guin's Earthsea series, Lloyd Alexander kind of uses true names in his Chronicles of Prydain series, which was from the 60s. Which like, predates a Wizard of Earthsea by like a year or two. So you're like, who came first? Technically Le Guin wrote a bunch of short stories around the same time that the first book of this series was published. So there's a lot of like, not confusion around that, but it's a lot of like, well, who was borrowing from who exactly? I think it's really interesting, mostly because the reason that you might recognize the series, The Chronicles of Prydain, is because Disney adapted very loosely The Black Cauldron, which is the second book from the series.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: And that also has a lot of Norse and like Odin-inspired traditions in it. As you might remember, there's a scene that features the Wild Hunt in that movie, and kind of the horned God is like this kind of evil Odin-esque character.
AMANDA: That's true.
JULIA: So again, we're all just pulling from the same wells here, you know, it's really not that different. The Chronicles of Prydain uses true names very similar to how Rumpelstiltskin uses true names, which is kind of this folkloric weaponized use of the name.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: But that kind of leads into Le Guin and A Wizard of Earthsea, because Le Guin uses it in two very different ways. So for people who are not familiar with the series and the magic system from the Earthsea cycle, Le Guin actually used these two short stories that predated the first novel in order to build out her world. And most important to us, at least in talking about true names is the short story called The Rule of Names.
AMANDA: There you go.
JULIA: So it basically introduces to the reader the concept of naming, which is, each citizen of Earthsea has one name as a child, which they then abandon at puberty in favor of both their true name and their use name. So the true name is something that is kept private because it can be used by other magic users to control individuals, very Rumpelstiltskin-esque. And then they also take on this use name which they are known for referred to as by the public use in like day to day business dealings, that sort of thing. So to share one's true name in the Earthsea cycle is an act showing complete trust because you're basically trusting this person not to use this power against you
AMANDA: Right.
JULIA: So something you would only do to like a true friend or a loved one, someone you don't think will ever betray you.
AMANDA: I'll say I would definitely protect that and I can imagine a lot of scenarios where somebody's like, you know, hey, no matter how you feel about this person as a teenager, like, you know, you got to really think about whether or not you're gonna share your true name.
JULIA: It's real like superhero secret identity stuff being like, yeah, you know, me and Louis Lane have been dating for six months now. Is it time for me to tell her that I'm Superman? Is she gonna betray me somehow? Like what's gonna happen here?
AMANDA: Yeah, what would the advice column etiquette be in that world?
JULIA: Amanda, you would know that better than me. How would Dear Abby refer to that?
AMANDA: Yeah, she'd be like, no, unless you put a ring on it, honey, that's probably would be her—her insight there.
JULIA: I like it, I like sassy, Dear Abby, thank you.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah.
JULIA: Going back to the magic of the Earthsea cycle, the true name that one has is always a single word in true speech, which is also known as old speech, which is the language of magic in the series. So magic in the series is kind of this like inborn talent that can be developed by training. And like, of course, because this is a fantasy novel, there is a magic school where people can travel and hone their skills and stuff like that. And if they are able to prove themselves through his training, they become staff-carrying wizards. Again, it's like hitting all of the classic fantasy tropes. We love it. Thank you, Ursula Le Guin, you're fantastic. And it is the job of these wizards, to basically keep harmony and balance in the world. Now, as I also mentioned, Magic and Earthsea is verbal and it uses old speech in order to cast magic. So basically, the concept here, and relevant to our true name conversation, is that everything has a true name that when spoken in old speech, gives you power over that thing. And true names not only applied to people but also to animals, forces of nature, trees, rocks, etc, etc. right? So in order to use magic in the Earthsea cycle, basically, a wizard would do something like, I am an eagle in the old language. And then because it is impossible to lie in old speech, they become an eagle.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: Which is so like, it's so simple, yet so smart. And you're just like, ah, yes, of course. But then, of course, it requires you to one be trusted by an object or a creature or to gain that knowledge. And that's what gives you the power like is kind of tuning yourself to nature, knowing what the name of a storm, or a rock, or a eagle is, and then being able to gain control over it through rather than like manipulation, which, again, there's a lot of like good and evil kind of young in forces of work here. But it also allows you to be like, ah, yes, because I have communed with nature because I have taken the time to truly know this thing, that's what gives me power over it. And I think that is fucking beautiful.
AMANDA: It is beautiful. and it's a metaphor for like education in life and knowing yourself as well, isn't it? Where you can't just kind of master something via a shortcut?
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And even is that really the goal, you need to understand something to fully appreciate it, to fully know it, and then maybe to work with it in a way that benefits you or you can shape then your surroundings. It reminds me to one of my favorite series, as I've talked about many times in the show Sabriel by Garth Nix. And it is all about being able to communicate with the dead, where speech is something that's obviously taken from them when somebody dies. And so if you know, kind of the like, there's bells that you sound to communicate with the dead and kind of make your way in and bind to the dead, compel them to speak, compel them to walk all kinds of things. And I've always loved it for like the power of sound as like a sonic—like sonic force is a magical force. But moreover, each of the bells has names and has personalities and you have to know their name, not in that just knowing it means you can master it, but knowing the name is the first step to really being able to like use the bells voice, to communicate with the world and to reshape it.
JULIA: I love that. And again, like this is all to say that so much of the fantasy genre takes from these folkloric and religious traditions. And, you know, while I think that many times when we're talking about true names in a modern context, we are definitely at least subconsciously thinking about the magic system that Le Guin imagined. I think at the same time, Le Guin is taking from things that we have known to be true since the dawn of time basically. In naming something we give it a definition of purpose, a meaning. And whether that is choosing a name for a child and hoping that they are to become something thing that is inhabited by that name, or just like creating a thing being like, that's a rock. Rocks are hard, that's why the name sounds like rock. Okay, Socrates, we get it.
AMANDA: We get it.
JULIA: Like, I think that's really kind of beautiful and something that like fantasy tends to harp upon things that we have always known to be true.
AMANDA: 100%.
JULIA: I kind of want to finish out by talking about the kind of nonmagical use of names and the true name. And I wanted to shout out conspirator Betty, who sent a great email with a lot of thoughts about how names hold power in the modern nonmagical context after our Rumpelstiltskin episode.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: Betty, sent a bunch of great examples. My favorite, Amanda, something that I know you and I are probably very familiar with is a parent calling their child by their full first middle, and last name when they're in trouble.
AMANDA: Oh, yes. Anytime I got called Amanda Noel McLoughlin, I knew something wrong was happening.
JULIA: Yeah. And so Betty raises a question, why does the full name hold more power in that sort of situation? And I think part of it, for me at least is the formality of using a full name by someone who you should have a very familial or familiar relationship with.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: And also, the fact that it is being used by the person who most likely gave you that full name in the first place, that's like exerting a certain amount of power. Or it's like, you know, sometimes people are like, I brought you into this world. and I can take you out like—
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: — yeah, kind of. Sure.
AMANDA: Exactly. And for many of us, our names also evoke ancestors.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And so for me hearing that was always a reminder that you know, I need to like my every action is either making my relatives proud or ashamed. And it's something I always keep in mind, when I am called by a name that my mother is called, my grandmother is called.
JULIA: You know, there is something kind of beautiful about that and I really, really enjoy that. Another one that Betty brought up that I have been thinking about lately, and that you kind of mentioned earlier, where we were talking about like Jewish Diaspora and stuff like that. But people coming to America and changing their name at like Ellis Island and stuff like that, one to appear more quote-unquote, “American”. And also something that I feel like a lot of our families probably dealt with to where it's, your grandparents would come over and they would be like, Giuseppe, and you know, like, very, in my case, very Italian names. But then they come to America, and they're like, no, no, we have to give our children American names so that you get like, Wayne like my father-in-law was Wayne after his family was like—
AMANDA: Yeah, Sean, John—
JULIA: Yeah, Rocco, and stuff like that, you know. Now my family is seeing a, like, kind of turn on that where all of these kids whose names were like Brian and Heather and whatnot, are naming their kids very Italian names, being like, no, no, we want to go back to our roots. We want to honor the people who came here and gave us a different life. So now we have Gio and Mia and all of these like super Italian names to kind of honor the names that our grandparents were afraid would make us too different.
AMANDA: Yeah, in synagogue, I've met like a baby Moshe, I've met, you know, babies with to my mind, like, you know, Abraham and kind of like, old uncle names that I think is really amazing. And there is tremendous power to in, you know, I know people who—when their families were freed from slavery, you know, chose a name for themselves rather than, you know, take on the name as was tradition of being referred to, you know, from the, you know, owner's name.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: So there—there is so much agency and freedom in choosing what your name says about you to the world and whose name you refer to yourself by. Plenty of people I know, like, took you know, names upon marriage or upon, you know, parents dying or came up with new names for new families. And it's—it's tremendously fraught, it can be because everybody you know, and they mean something really dear to a lot of people, and changing it can be an incredible act of like self-assertion.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: In a way that's not always easy, but I—I think for a lot of people is a really important symbolic step.
JULIA: Yeah. And I mean, same can be said about gender identity and transitioning and finding a name that feels right for you when one obviously didn't feel right in the past. And I think that's also true of [54:36] talking about gender but like nicknames. So sometimes a lot—you'll get like a nickname that you had as a child, but it doesn't feel like it fits as you get older. Like maybe you were a Billy when you were a kid, and now you're like no, I'm William now and you're like, oh, yes, you're an adult. You've— you've marched the passage of time from your childish nickname to your quote-unquote, “true name that fits you better now.”
AMANDA: Names impact how the world sees us like we've said this whole time. So maybe being referred to by something that is more childlike, you know, makes you feel more childish and how people are referring to you and so you want to, you know, assert that adulthood and that identity, or just the fact that like, you can choose things for yourself now, and you know, say your own name.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And that is incredibly powerful, and something that I think we should really respect.
JULIA: Yeah. And unfortunately, that is kind of a double-edged sword. We've all read studies where people from like black and Hispanic communities that Have names that kind of reflect those communities can be discriminated against based solely on their name, which is kind of heartbreaking in a lot of ways. because these names come from these traditions and these communities. And to know that it can be the difference between getting a job offer and not getting a job offer is extremely disheartening and extremely upsetting. So.
AMANDA: Yeah, something as simple as having to use a Starbucks name, right? Like something that—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: —you know, is, is more commonly reflected or understood as normal, even though to you your name is incredibly normal. And again, depending on who's in power, and who gets to define normal, makes you feel, you know, shut out, or adds that kind of barrier of misunderstanding or otherness. Where, again, names reflect reality, and just like how we look and just like how we move through the world, names tell people things, and people bring their own associations and biases, as well—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: —as to what a name means for the person they're encountering.
JULIA: Yeah, that is 100% true. It also, to a certain extent, reminds me of the use of names in early internet, which I know you and I have a lot of familiarity with. But the idea of that like giving your true name on the internet now can open you up to someone like finding out your personal information, opening you up to tak, getting doxxed, etc. And there, there was like a certain truth behind our parents telling us like, don't tell strangers on the internet anything about yourself. And that's why so many of us, especially in the early internet used to like usernames or pseudonyms that weren't anything really close to our real identities.
AMANDA: And choosing that was a big moment for me, you know, choosing my early email address and usernames when I was 8, 9,10,11 you know, it was one of those early examples of, of naming. And again, incredibly powerful, and something that clearly has been important to people for as long as we have had names, which is as long as we have been people.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. So that's all to say that the origins of true names they reside solidly in mythology and folklore, but they do have in fact, like a real power in the modern, non-magical world. And once again, human beings find what I understand to be a universal truth early, early on, and it's something that we see as a throughline throughout all of our episodes, and it makes me happy to know that so many different traditions have these beliefs around names.
AMANDA: So as always, conspirators tell us what yours are. Tell us what you think what you grew up learning, and if there is a name you have chosen for yourself and why, if that's something that you are excited to share, we would love to hear it. Go to spiritspodcast.com and click contact send us an email.
JULIA: Yeah. And the next time that you are thinking about giving your true name to a squirrel so that they can get a credit card, remember, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool. And don't— don't do that.
[theme]
AMANDA: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
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JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.
AMANDA: Bye!