What's in a name?

Recently, I have read a reply to a blog post 'On the naming and not naming of things' cricket7642.wordpress.com. The reply by anhrefn.blogspot.com stimulated me to re-examine the question of possession, the ownership of all things by defining, labelling, classifying and categorising them to file away, and ultimately control. Then moving onto the next mystery and starting again.

I showed a photograph of flowers which grow near the dacha to my friends at work.
They have always grown there flowering in the spring and looking breathtakingly beautiful. The leaves are lavish and fleshy. Sturdy veins can be traced easily on their surfaces. Rain bounces off them with gusto and never penetrates. Then, within weeks, the flowers elongate, wither and transmute into brown twigs with a bowed heads of scraggly bells. Only the leaves maintain their plumpness and look rather disturbing supporting the dead.

“What is it?” was the collective enquiry... My reply was qualitative, full of superlatives and aesthetics and did not supply what was required; the name! A massive search ensued involving a number of interested parties. It became really important that the plant was named, categorised, de-mystified and catalogued. The ingenuity of the researches was remarkable. Words, images, video footage was sought and then discarded. Exhausted, the investigators looked deflated and non-too-pleased with me! Somehow, I seemed to have tricked them, their disappointed sidelong glances said. The flower was elusive, without identity, wild, challenging. In some way it did not belong in the classified and clearly labelled world. And because it did not have a name, it could not be owned, controlled and filed away under the letter ‘what letter?’

At school an old nun amazed me with her infallible memory. By the second week in September she knew every girl in school by name. She was never mistaken, her voice resounding in corridors and assemblies, making us stop automatically at the sound of our name articulated in that impervious tone. As I did not have an unhealthy respect for authority and I was very interested in her talent for remembering names, one day I asked how she remembers us all, and more importantly why? She didn’t bother with my former question but was very quick to answer the latter. “If I know their name, I can control them, own them. I'm in charge!” I can see her standing in the corridor, towering over me, showing her displeasure.

Displeasure at my questioning?

No! Displeasure and annoyance at not being able to pronounce my name!

What's in a name?