(AYRT) Ahaha, no, I have NO TIME to write that, and I couldn't do it justice even if I did. But someone else totally should. Names and identities fascinate me, and all the DF stuff about names is like my catnip.
Especially since as it stands in the books I don't feel like I believe it. It desperately wants to be tweaked until it makes sense!
Because when I was younger I went exclusively by a nickname, and if I was called the proper, longer version of my name it would actually startle me, because that wasn't me. So this idea that it's a person's FULL name in all its parts that has the power feels disingenuous.
But then these days I DO go by the longer version of my name, and not the nickname, and now the nickname would feel weird -- but the nickname is still part of who I am, because it is who I was.
And then there's also stuff about names that aren't part of one's legal name. And I have one of those too, a name given to me when I was a wee child, and it is connected to my identity, but would never be reeled off as a part of my name, because it's a separate name altogether and besides I never actually get called it.
And then there's the stuff you brought up in your original prompt, with having multiple identities through things like fannish behaviour, and I can totally identify with that too, because my fannish name is a part of me.
So it all makes me think that there isn't just a "Name" that can be recited, if you know the whole thing, and hold within it the entirety of one's identity. Identity, and names, are so much more complicated than that. And for more than just the odd person out. I know I have an unusually complicated name history, but I'm pretty sure that MOST people have a more complicated relationship with their name than DF's thing about Names would have you believe.
Er.
Sorry about the tl;dr. I, um, feel strongly about this, in case you hadn't noticed....
Re: A haunting in Iowa City
Especially since as it stands in the books I don't feel like I believe it. It desperately wants to be tweaked until it makes sense!
Because when I was younger I went exclusively by a nickname, and if I was called the proper, longer version of my name it would actually startle me, because that wasn't me. So this idea that it's a person's FULL name in all its parts that has the power feels disingenuous.
But then these days I DO go by the longer version of my name, and not the nickname, and now the nickname would feel weird -- but the nickname is still part of who I am, because it is who I was.
And then there's also stuff about names that aren't part of one's legal name. And I have one of those too, a name given to me when I was a wee child, and it is connected to my identity, but would never be reeled off as a part of my name, because it's a separate name altogether and besides I never actually get called it.
And then there's the stuff you brought up in your original prompt, with having multiple identities through things like fannish behaviour, and I can totally identify with that too, because my fannish name is a part of me.
So it all makes me think that there isn't just a "Name" that can be recited, if you know the whole thing, and hold within it the entirety of one's identity. Identity, and names, are so much more complicated than that. And for more than just the odd person out. I know I have an unusually complicated name history, but I'm pretty sure that MOST people have a more complicated relationship with their name than DF's thing about Names would have you believe.
Er.
Sorry about the tl;dr. I, um, feel strongly about this, in case you hadn't noticed....