A GOOD NAME IS OUR RICHEST POSSESSION WHILE LIVING
What’s in a name, names which will be abhorred in coming times, rightfully so.
Okay - as promised last time a verse with the general form as a sonnet.
In A Name
Trump is maybe a name that we will all loathe,
It might be wishful thinking now on my part,
Neofascist underpinnings - cruel icy heart,
Memories of past burning bodies in stoves,
They like his toy swagger, breaking of his oath,
We watch in horror as the nightmares impart,
The thing is he’s a fool - he’s never smart,
Americans - in democracy we clothe.
We have let this sly grifter bend our good ways,
He’s caused caustic chaos to rain down on us,
Of this man we can only silently cuss,
We look at the calendar and count the days,
In this name we get a strong feeling of gag,
Picture him caressing and humping the flag.
I finally found a pdf of Acton referenced in my verse above online. Here is an image of this publication should it interest you. To get to this ebook go to this link.
I found many good quotes on names to relate to you. It seems most of the quotes from the 1800s still apply to today. I find them quite interesting, perhaps you do too. In any case here are a number of quotes with brief biographies of their authors.
“Some men do as much begrudge others a good name, as they want one themselves; and perhaps that is the reason of it.”
- Penn.
William Penn (24 October 1644 – 10 August 1718) was an English writer, religious thinker, and influential Quaker who founded the Province of Pennsylvania during the British colonial era. Penn, an advocate of democracy and religious freedom, was known for his amicable relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans who had resided in present-day Pennsylvania prior to European settlements in the state. A man of deep religious conviction, Penn authored numerous works, exhorting believers to adhere to the spirit of Primitive Christianity.[3] Penn was imprisoned several times in the Tower of London due to his faith, and his book No Cross, No Crown, published in 1669, which he authored from jail, has become a classic of Christian theological literature.
“A person with a bad name is already half hanged.”
— Old Proverb.
“With the vulgar and the learned, names have great weight; the wise use a writ of inquiry into their legitimacy when they are advanced as authorities.”
- Zimmermann.
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann / Johann Georg Zimmermann (8 December 1728, in Brugg, Aargau – 7 October 1795, in Hanover) was a Swiss philosophical writer, naturalist, and physician. He was the private physician of George III and later Frederick the Great. In Zimmermann's character there was a strange combination of sentimentalism, melancholy and enthusiasm; and it was by the free and eccentric expression of these qualities that he excited the interest of his contemporaries.
“Who hath not owned, with rapture-smitten frame, the power of grace, the magic of a name.”
— Couper.
William Couper (or Cowper) (1568–1619) was a Bishop of Galloway in Scotland. His character as delineated by Calderwood is by no means flattering, but the portrait is doubtless coloured by party prejudice. "He was", says Calderwood, "a man filled with self-conceate, and impatient of anie contradiction, more vehement in the wrong course than ever he was fervent in the right, wherein he seemed to be fervent enough. He made his residence in the Canongate, neere to the Chapell Royall, whereof he was deane, and went sometimes but once in two years till his diocese. When he went he behaved himself verie imperiouslie". Spottiswood, on the other hand, was of opinion that he "affected too much the applause of the people".
“Favor or disappointment has been often conceded, as the name of the claimant has affected us; and the accidental affinity or coincidence of a name, connected with ridicule or hatred, with pleasure or disgust, have operated like magic.”
— Disraeli.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, DL, JP (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman, Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy". He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the British Empire and military action to expand it, both of which were popular among British voters. He is the only British Prime Minister to have been born Jewish.
“Names alone mock destruction; they survive the doom of all creation.”
- Trevanion.
John Trevanion (1613–1643) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons of England from 1640 to 1643. He was a royalist officer who was killed in action in the English Civil War. A seventeenth-century ode relating to four Cornish commanders included the distich: Gone the four wheels of Charles's wain, Grenville, Godolphin, Slanning, Trevanion slain. They did not all fall at the same time, nor in the same place, but all four were killed in the year 1643. Slanning and Trevanion were slain at the siege of Bristol.
“There is also an evil name or report, light, indeed, and easy to raise, but difficult to carry, and still more difficult to get rid of.”
- Hesiod.
Hesiod (was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.) He is generally regarded by Western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.' Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought,[6] Archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.
“He that tears away a man's good name tears his flesh from his bones.”
— R. South.
Robert South (4 September 1634 – 8 July 1716) was an English churchman who was known for his combative preaching and his Latin poetry. He published a large number of sermons, and they appeared in a collected form in 1692 in six volumes, reaching a second edition in his lifetime in 1715. There have been several later issues; one in two volumes, with a memoir (Henry George Bohn, 1845).
“A good name like goodwill is got by many actions, and lost by one.”
— Lord Jeffrey.
Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (23 October 1773 – 26 January 1850) was a Scottish judge and literary critic. His parliamentary career, which, though not brilliantly successful, had won him high general esteem, was terminated by his elevation to the judicial bench as Lord Jeffrey in May 1834. In 1842 he was moved to the first division of the Court of Session. On the disruption of the Scottish Church he took the side of the seceders, giving a judicial opinion in their favour, afterwards reversed by the House of Lords.
“Next to the dread of annihilation, we dread the extinction of our names when we die.”
— A. Barnes.
Albert Barnes (December 1, 1798 – December 24, 1870) was an American theologian, clergyman, abolitionist, temperance advocate, and author. Barnes is best known for his extensive Bible commentary and notes on the Old and New Testaments, published in a total of 14 volumes in the 1830s. Barnes was an abolitionist. In his book The Church and Slavery (1857), Barnes excoriates slavery as evil and immoral, and calls for it to be dealt with from the pulpit "as other sins and wrongs are" (most pointedly in chapter VII, "The Duty of the Church at Large on the Subject of Slavery"). In his famous 1852 oratory, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?", Frederick Douglass quoted Barnes as saying: "There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it."
“Great names ought to bear us up and carry us, but never run away with us.”
— Landor.
Walter Savage Landor (30 January 1775 – 17 September 1864) was an English writer, poet, and activist. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem "Rose Aylmer," but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity. As remarkable as his work was, it was equalled by his rumbustious character and lively temperament. Both his writing and political activism, such as his support for Lajos Kossuth and Giuseppe Garibaldi, were imbued with his passion for liberal and republican causes. He befriended and influenced the next generation of literary reformers such as Charles Dickens and Robert Browning.
“An honest and good name, to whomsoever it belongs, possesses a worth excelling life.”
— Euripides
Euripides (c. 480 – c. 406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined - he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
“A name truly good is the aroma from virtuous character; it is of unspeakable service to all who are capable of feeling its inspiration; there is no better heritage than a good name that a father can bequeath to his children; nor is there in a family any richer heirloom than the memory of a noble ancestor.”
— J. Hamilton.
John Church Hamilton (August 22, 1792 − July 25, 1882) was an American historian, biographer, and lawyer. He was a son of Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. In 1804, when Hamilton was nearly twelve years old, Vice President Aaron Burr killed his father in a duel. Upon returning from military service, "he did not apply himself to the practice of law," according to his obituary in The New York Times. Instead, "having strong literary tastes, [Hamilton] devoted himself to the study of history, with a view to writing his father's life."
I came across an article in Psychology Today on the importance of names to us. I thought it might be interesting to share as I’m on the general topic of the importance of personal names. Expect certain names from the current MAGA movement to become radioactive in the coming years. Or at least that is a hope in a fair world.
CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY
3 Things Your Name Might Reveal About You
Humans and computers can match faces to names with surprising success.
Updated July 19, 2023
Michael E. W. Varnum Ph.D.
Unserious Psychology
Research shows that people hold stereotypes about others based on their names.
Names can reveal cultural values and cultural shifts, research suggests.
Our names may also influence our personality.
Names may also influence important life decisions although this claim is more controversial.
What’s your name? It’s a common enough question we will likely answer hundreds or perhaps thousands of times during our lives. Beyond making social interactions less awkward and giving us a helpful tag to remember information about others, names can also reveal more than you might imagine about human psychology.
Names as Stereotypes
What type of person comes to mind when you think of someone named Elizabeth? How about someone named Misty? According to 400 American participants, “Elizabeths” are high in warmth and competence, while “Mistys” are low on both of these positive traits. “Rileys" are seen as warm but not competent, and “Ruths” are viewed as competent but not warm (Newman et al., 2018; 2022).
Other work suggests that we use names to infer information, often stereotypical, about others’ ethnicity and social class. In a series of experiments involving thousands of participants, Crabtree and colleagues (2022) showed that participants tended to guess that targets with names that are more common among European Americans, like “Mary,” are higher in both education and income than targets with names like “Lakisha” that are more common among African Americans.
Names more common among Latin Americans were linked with the lowest perceived income and education levels on average. In contrast, names more common among Asian Americans were linked to the highest perceived education levels and income levels comparable to those with names common among European Americans.
Names and Culture
Names can tell us something about culture, and have been used in a number of studies to trace geographic variations in values and cultural changes over time. Several researchers have argued that the choice of a relatively unpopular vs. popular name may indicate a preference for uniqueness or conformity—essentially, a way of helping your child to fit in or stand out.
And indeed, in parts of the world where individualism is higher, so is the proportion of children receiving relatively uncommon names (Ogihara, 2023; Varnum & Kitayama, 2011; 2022). Regional differences in naming practices also suggest that preferences for nonconformity are stronger in parts of the U.S. that were more recently the frontier, potentially reflecting historical and contemporary self-selection in migration to these regions (Varnum & Kitayama, 2011). Consistent with this idea, an analysis of Scandinavian census and migration records suggests that people with less-common names were more likely to emigrate historically (Knudsen, 2019).
Shifts in naming also may signal changes in cultural values over time. The proportion of babies receiving popular names has in fact declined dramatically over the past two centuries in the U.S. (Twenge et al., 2010; Grossmann & Varnum, 2015) and over the past few decades in Japan (Ogihara & Ito, 2022), shifts which are consistent with other evidence of rising individualism in these societies over time (Hamamura, 2012; Santos, Varnum, & Grossmann, 2017).
Beyond reflecting a preference for conformity or non-conformity, names may be linked to what’s known as honor culture, a set of norms and values common in the American South emphasizing the importance of reputation and defense of reputation through aggression (Nisbett, 2018). An analysis of popular names by Brown and colleagues (2014) suggests patronymic names (giving a child their father’s first name) are more common in states where honor culture is more predominant. In a separate study, the researchers found that men who more strongly endorsed honor values reported a greater preference for giving any future children they might father their own first name.
Our Names, Our Destinies?
Intriguingly, recent studies suggest that we may look like our names. When asked to guess which of a handful of names corresponded to a photograph of a person’s face, humans and computers were able to do so at rates above chance (Zwebner et al., 2017), a phenomenon the researchers suggest may be due to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Documenting Cultural Lineages
Two Lessons From Psychology for Policymakers
Our names may also influence where we end up living and what kind of careers we pursue. In a series of studies, Pelham and colleagues (2002) found that women named Virginia, as opposed to Mildred, were more likely to live in Virginia Beach. “Mildreds,” on the other hand, were more likely than “Virginias” to live in Milwaukee. The researchers also found that “Dennises” were disproportionately likely to be dentists. Results like these suggest that our names may shape these consequential life decisions through what the researchers call “implicit egotism.”*
These findings are quite well-known—however, a set of replications and re-analyses by Simonsohn (2011) has cast doubt on whether in fact names are driving these effects. For example, although "Dennises" are more likely than "Walters" to be dentists, they are also more likely than "Walters" to be lawyers. Findings that Simonsohn argues suggest cohort effects in name frequencies rather than implicit egotism. That said, in later work, Pelham and Mauricio (2014) found more robust support for the notion that our last names may influence career choices, i.e. "Carpenters" are more likely to be, you guessed it, carpenters.
Names aren’t a typical variable in psychological science, and most popular books on names have little science to them. Yet the study of names can provide valuable insights into phenomena ranging from cultural change to stereotypes. Our names may also be cues that shape not only others’ perceptions of us but also our personality and (perhaps) our choices about where to live and what to do for a living.
*Implicit egotism is the hypothesis that humans have an unconscious preference for things they associate with themselves. In a 2002 paper, psychologists Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones argue that people have a basic desire to feel good about themselves and behave according to that desire. These automatic positive associations would influence feelings about almost anything associated with the self. Based on the mere ownership effect, which states that people like things more if they own them, and the name-letter effect, which states that people like the letters of their name more than other letters, the authors theorised that people would develop an affection for objects and concepts that are chronically associated with the self, such as their name. They called this putative form of unconscious attraction 'implicit egotism'.
That’s what I have for today. Hopefully I kept your interest and passed on some knowledge, which might help out in this election year, rather than only being trivial. If it is deemed as trivial, then perhaps it it still has a value?
177th Posting, March 6, 2024.