The so-called “genealogy standard” is to use birth names for everyone, even in cultures where it doesn’t make sense.

The “encylopedic standard” makes more sense. As a mental shorthand, I think of it as “best known as”. For example:

Cokayne [formerly Adams], George Edward (1825–1911), genealogist, born at 64 Russell Square, London, on 29 April 1825, was the fourth son and youngest child (in a family of eight) of William Adams (1772–1851), LLD, of Thorpe, Surrey, advocate in Doctors’ Commons, and his wife, the Hon. Mary Anne (d. 1873), daughter of William Cockayne and niece and coheir of Borlase Cockayne, sixth and last Viscount Cullen. Dictionary of National Biography

Another:

William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton (b. William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, in Hope, AR) was the 42nd president of the United States. He served from 1993 to 2001. Ballotpedia.org

We could go on and on.

“In England, as well as in France and other continental nations, down to the seventeenth century, married women and widows not infrequently retained their maiden names, generally, however, with an alias ; and in certain parts of Scotland and Wales, such persons still sign by their maiden name in legal documents, even though described in them by the surnames of their lords. In Scottish deeds, they are almost always described by both the maiden and the marital surname ; a course which ought invariably to be followed, as suggested by Mr. Hubback, where they do not conform to the practice adopted in England of signing by the husband’s name.”

George Seton, The Law and Practice of Heraldry in Scotland (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1863), 392-93 (citing Evidence of Succession, 455).

Yesterday’s post about names as performance got me to thinking. Somewhere on the periphery of memory I seemed to recall a paper about a medieval debate whether people can have names. And, sure enough, I found it:

• Rachel Anna Bauder. Naming Particulars: A Thirteenth-Century Debate on Whether Individuals Have Proper Names. PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2016. (The original link at University of Toronto is here).

As a medievalist I’m fascinated by the details, but as a genealogist it’s enough to know that such a debate could and did occur. Probably no one in casual conversation would believe it.

So, let’s have just a taste. From the overview: “First, how was it theoretically possible to doubt the nameability of individuals? To answer this question, I look at the medieval traditions in the language arts. Specifically, I argue that Boethius’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Perihermeneias provide criteria for what counts as a nomen or “name” in a philosophical sense, but those criteria specifically exclude words that might otherwise be regarded as nomina or “nouns” in a grammatical sense. Granting this distinction, I then ask the second question of the thesis: On what reasonable grounds might a philosopher think that a name of an individual is merely a grammatical “noun” rather than a genuine philosophical “name”? Here the answer seems to be that individuals cannot be named as such because they cannot be understood as such. I investigate two broad motivations in the arguments: (a) human cognitive faculties are not equipped to grasp the individual as such, and (b) individuals are unknowable in themselves because they are composites of matter (which is unknowable) and form (which may be knowable, but which may also be common to many individuals).“

In other words, it’s medieval European philosophers learning to digest Aristotle after re-discovering him in the 12th and 13th centuries. (Thank you, Muslims). Same old, same old.

I think those of us with personal names are safe enough. Our heritage doesn’t require us to give them up.

Are names performative? That’s a new idea for me. I came across it while reading a book by Abu El-Haj about the politics of Israeli archeology:

The author “specifies for the first time the relationship between national ideology, colonial settlement, and the production of historical knowledge. She analyzes particular instances of history, artifacts, and landscapes in the making to show how archaeology helped not only to legitimize cultural and political visions but, far more powerfully, to reshape them” (says Goodreads). Good stuff.

In a discussion about naming pottery types, Abu El-Haj points out that naming a type can be a way of creating evidence from a neutral fact. “In other words, the name of objects was integral to producing an independent evidentiary basis upon which an empirical tradition of archaeological practice would henceforth build” (119). A somewhat difficult idea but easy to understand once it’s grasped. For example, naming the type “Israelite” rather than “collared rim” is a conclusion from the evidence and facilitates the argument that this type is proof of Israelite occupation (118-19). It becomes more difficult to argue that finding the pottery type called Israelite is not evidence this is an Israelite site.

In making this argument, Abu El-Haj cites Jacqueline Stevens for the idea names are performative. And here’s where my attention is really captured.

“As Jacqueline Stevens has argued quite eloquently with regard to personal names and national affiliations, they are not merely ‘contingent label’ detachable from some already constituted personhood. Rather, ‘the personal name is also the person’ (1999:154); such names perform nationality (158). Extending that argument to question of scientific facts and the naming of things, the name Israelite performs in the very ontology of material-cultural things. Thus, the repeated invocation if Israelite pottery as evidence for Israelite presence in debates concerning questions of chronology and character continuously enacts the nation itself as historical fact. The nation’s historical reality, after all, is evidence in the pottery form itself–a form that exists as a specific ethnic class of objects only when named.“

Now I want to read the Stevens book as well. Goodreads’ summary says, “People are said to acquire their affiliations of ethnicity, race, and sex at birth. Hence, these affiliations have long been understood to be natural, independent of the ability of political societies to define who we are. Reproducing the State vigorously challenges the conventional view.” (Goodreads).

Adding it to my list.

• Nadia Abu El-Haj. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological practice and territorial self-fashioning in Israeli society. 2001.
• Jacqueline Stevens. Reproducing the State. 1999.