Names

[malsperanza]

In the sad story this week of (another) school shooting, the one in Red Lake Reservation in Minnesota, something unrelated to that event caught my eye. Newspaper reports sometimes convey, sidelong, information and ideas other than the topic they are covering.

Indian surnames, sometimes Englished, sometimes not, are often remarkable. Like the invented surnames Jews took for themselves in the 17th and 18th centuries (Rosegarden, Diamond, Silverstone, Greentree), they have a kind of conscious poetry.

Red Lake, north near Canada, is a Chippewa Ojibwe reservation. Apparently many of the surnames that appeared in the news stories are common there. They include:

Dawn Fineday
Roman Stately (director of the Red Lake Fire Department)
Thurlene Stillday (a girl killed in the massacre)

Going to an Ojibwe genealogical site, in addition to the more typical Indian English surnames (Blood, Blackeagle, Buckdeer, Fox, Frost, Hazard, Kickingbear, Littlestar, Redcloud) and a good many French names, I also find

Badboy
Downwind
Everywind
Earth
Prayingday
Skipintheday
Holeintheday



Strutt
Swaddle
Nope
Dire
Skinaway
Tainter
Wack
Severence

And then there are the sort of names that so attracted Tolkien and later Rowling,

Slinker
Slaughter
Soldier


Ojibwe names are

Ahkukkungaywenen Ahkahkunjaywenen Ahkahkahshaywene
Jebezhigoke
Kagegejig
Muck Muckkundwawenene
Kiniwigwanebeak
Pahoombegwonaybe
Songwayway
Marie Esquayannuckquod Ishkweianakwadok
Aheendahjewaybeq Ieendahjewaybeak


I would like to know more about those surnames that end in -day.

In any case, in fiction there is an art to choosing names for characters that resonate but do not burden them like the nametags at a convention:

Hi! My Name Is Disillusioned Hero!

Hi! My Name Is Spunky Heroine!

Hi! My Name Is Evil Badguy!

I mostly like the names given to characters by Faulkner, Dickens, Tolkien and Rowling--despite their nametag qualities (Mr. Micawber, Addie Burden, Joe Christmas), they always have a ring of authenticity and verism and a touch of music: Snape, Hagrid, Uriah Heep, Flem Snopes, Coldfield, COl. Sartoris, Samwise Gamgee. I have never been bothered by the artifice of giving a fictional character a name loaded with meaning, as long as it is done artfully.

The one name I cannot like is Harry Potter. The choice of a generic, bland, whitebread name for the hero continues to puzzle me.

Comments

[tipgardner.livejournal.com]

The one name I cannot like is Harry Potter. The choice of a generic, bland, whitebread name for the hero continues to puzzle me.
It puzzles you, or you just don't like it? Because isn't the bland name for the hero the entire point of the name?

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Both, I guess. In a book where nearly all the names have multiple meanings and specific symbolic references, the choice to give Harry an Everyman name seems ... a little gimmicky, somehow: Hey, kids, you too may turn out to be history's greatest wizard and the boy who saves the world, bla bla.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Actually, one of the things I love about Harry is his totally generic name. Now I'll have to think why, but I love that she made that choice. There has to be some purpose to the way that some of the witches/wizards have old latinate names and some have English names and it clearly doesn't have to do with either being pureblooded or how much money you have if James is an example.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

I'd love to hear more about why. Some of the HP names are connected directly to alchemichal symbolism (Hermione/Hermes, Draco, Luna, etc.). Most of them have very deliberate and even complicated sets of references: e.g., Dumbledore, whose name is Bee (the Builder, the Stinger, the Honey maker), and also recalls the foolish bumbler Sir Thomas Thom of Appledore (AA Milne). Others, like Snape, are wonderfully Dickensian--snake + snap + snipe + snip + sneer + snare.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that Harry's name is either a) not his real name; or b) full of embedded references we don't yet see; or c) both. So far, though, he is Everyboy.