Act Of Naming Research Articles

Functions of toponyms in novels

This article is devoted to the functions of toponyms in the novel. The study was undertaken in order to fill a gap in the field of literary onomastics, in which more attention has so far been paid to characters’ names than to place names, and within the research on toponyms no universal method has yet been proposed that could be used to study the functions of these names in any novel. The proposal of such a universal method would enable the further development of research within this topic and the comparison of analyses carried out based on this method. In the long run, it might also have implications for research in the field of translating toponyms in the novel. The starting point for this study is the theory of two acts (which uses the act of naming and the act of using a name). The functions of toponyms in the novel are divided into two groups: permanent and momentary. In the course of the analysis, the anti-didactic function, which has not been identified in any previous studies based on the theory of two acts, was recognised.

National and Cultural Features of Creating a Name (Naming) in the Language

Objective: This article investigates the national and cultural features of creating names (naming) in language, aiming to explore the underlying principles and influences that shape the process of naming across different cultures and linguistic contexts. The objective of the article is to analyze the intricate interplay between language, culture, and individual identity in the act of naming.
 
 Methods: The method employed in this study encompasses a comparative analysis of naming practices in diverse linguistic and cultural settings. Through the examination of naming conventions, etymology, and socio-cultural factors, the study seeks to unveil the cultural nuances and linguistic mechanisms that underpin the creation and significance of names.
 
 Results: The results of the article illuminate the profound connection between names and cultural identity, reflecting the rich tapestry of traditions, beliefs, and historical legacies within diverse linguistic communities. The analysis reveals the intricate ways in which language and culture intersect to imbue names with layers of meaning and symbolism, encompassing familial, societal, and spiritual dimensions.
 
 Conclusion: Conclusion part includes, the findings emphasize the intrinsic link between naming and cultural identity, highlighting the intricate web of linguistic, historical, and social influences that shape the process of naming across different cultures. The study underscores the importance of honoring and understanding the national and cultural features of creating names, fostering cross-cultural appreciation and respect for the diverse ways in which language and culture intertwine in the act of naming.

Tranzitusok, exitusok és modulációk

The networked narrative complexities of Bodor texts are achieved by variations and iterations, and this is especially the case with the intricately written Sinistra körzet. This allows for the kind of alinear reading that makes possible the cross-referencing of the different textual levels (e.g. a plot point, a description, or a phrase uttered by a character) as well as the self-reflexive correlation of textual elements and speech events that otherwise appear in separate contexts. This means that the text opens itself up to additional semantic possibilities and self-representational shi”fting. The character and landscape descriptions in Bodor oft”en have the marked effect of blurring the lines between humans, animals, plants, and objects, thereby creating a rich field of metaphorical relations and modulations that venture into the ironic and the grotesque. Humans are substituted/reattributed as animalistic via the act of naming, in order to garner a sense of uniqueness, of the unknown, of the alien, but at the same time this substitution brings about both the annihilation and the familiarization of what is human. is paper explores the textual semiosis of Bodor texts through close readings, focusing on characterization (e.g. “vörös kakas”) and on soundscape descriptions which include the mixing of biophonic and antropophonic sounds. e narrative is “unreliable” and the speech events are idiomatic, resulting in a performative textual worlding and a grotesque-absurd modality that never quite become thetical. In Bodor, the transitions/transformations resist being allegorized.

“Acaricié las cosas”

Abstract After her father’s death, the poetic subject in Luz Pichel’s Galician-language Casa pechada (Closed Home, 2006) returns from the city to clear the things in her house in a small Galician village. However, these things do not conform to any sense of social, emotional, or material permanence. The decay of closed-down houses and abandoned farm tools speaks to and reproduces the imprint of rural extractivism, symbolic violence, and ecological precarization on the Galician countryside. The act of naming can determine what things are and the emotions they awaken: utensils or trash, repurposed tools or ruins, personal souvenirs or museum pieces. However, the rural, at times impoverished, at times gentrified, may lack names for its materials. Pichel’s self-translation Cativa en su lughar (Cativa in Her Place, 2013) gets this point across by using familiar Castrapo rather than Spanish: a pidgin romance variation that belongs to no normative language that it is closely related to (Spanish, Galician, or Portuguese) but traverses them all. Phonetic aspects, like accent and phonemes (the “gheada”), resist incorporation to any standardized, state-sponsored language, and in turn, the names that may care for / curate rural things rely on paronomastic associations, identifications, and oppositions across languages. The article claims that in Cativa, signs and names may define the monetary value, the purpose, and the substance of things, but language’s material embodiment also supports and mobilizes their emotional and political meanings.

‘To be or not to be’ of Eco-Deconstruction

This paper aims to unravel a tension between the act of naming and ‘differential relationality’. Derrida has taught us that ‘naming’ is an essentialising, and thus metaphysical gesture that works to define and circumscribe a field of work (for instance, ‘Eco-Deconstruction’), the human, and ecology. ‘Naming’ entails the beginning of the institutionalisation and sedimentation of a field, despite a ‘field’s’ claim to the opposite. The danger of such sedimentation is that it perpetuates what Derrida calls ipseity that in the history of western philosophy and metaphysics has worked in contradistinction to the nonhuman (animals, environment, ecology).

“When you know your name, you should hang on to it” The Power of Names in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon

Names and the act of naming are an important part of Toni Morrison’sSong of Solomon. Characters’names are filled with meaning and are a crucial part of the characters’personal and collective identity.The plot of the novel, spanningseveral decades, is largely told through flashbacks thus providing the story of many generations of the Dead family. This allows for the understanding of how names influence several generations of the same familyas theycan be representative of traditionand heritage but also trauma.This paper is dividedin two parts: first, the origin of some nameswill be detailed with an explanation of its symbolism; then I will delve into the power that eachnamehaswithin the plotand the narrative of the novel.

Marguerite Duras, le judaïsme et l’interdit du N/nom dans Le camion et La pluie d’été

In the script and film, Le camion (1977) by Marguerite Duras, a single biblical name – “Abraham” – emerges from a backdrop of indistinct characters and places. During the film, the name becomes taboo. Thirteen years later, a similar phenomenon occurs in La pluie d’été (1990) when the verse “I, son of David, King of Jerusalem” from Ecclesiastes repeats regularly throughout the text and generates a feeling of discomfort and embarrassment. Furthermore, in this novel, characters are “polynymous”, shifting from one identity to another, one name to another. Here, the act of naming is entirely unique and provokes a deep sense of fear that manifests in the text through the characters’ paroxysmal reactions: cries, screams, howls, and silence. The main focus of this article will be to study the source of this malaise and to determine the prohibitions and taboos that lead to this incredible loss of speech. Thus, in the first part of the article, I examine how and why Duras populates Le camion and La pluie d’été with biblical, Jewish names and the way in which “Abraham” and the “the son of David” in these works become concentrated into a single word and identity: “Jew” or Juden”. In the second part of the article, I explore how the characters’ paroxysmal reactions relate to the difficulty and importance of assigning a name, both in terms of individual identity, but also in terms of the prohibitions and interdictions against divine representation and verbalization in the Hebrew Bible.

O nome e o ato de nomear: o reconhecimento do outro em Benjamin e Levinas

This paper aims to reflect on the name and the act of naming. The reflection on these two points takes place in two perspectives: at first, we will try to show that to name means to recognize and that to have a name is to have an identity. For this moment Benjamin will be fundamental. In a second step, we intend to show that the name may become a totalizing element of identity, insofar as the meaning that accompanies it tends to be seen as the total meaning of the person who owns it. Levinas will be fundamental at that moment, especially to show that, often, in view of the possible totalizing element of the name, the act of naming is more important than the name itself.  

Jazyk a krajina v antropologickém výzkumu

Language is a key element in the perception, formation, and reproduc- tion of landscapes and group boundaries. It is effective in at least three dimensions, namely, the inner/cognitive, the outward/appropriative, and the collective/identitarian. The inner dimension refers to the fact that our perception of landscape and our spatial cognition are determined, to a large extent, by the linguistic terms and grammatical structures specific to our language. The outward dimension refers to the capacity of language to project linguistically- and culturally-determined understandings into the physical world and create and appropriate places and landscapes by the act of naming. Finally, the collective dimension points to the importance of the linguistic delimitation of landscapes and their association with group identities. The article summarizes crucial recent findings in all three of the aforementioned dimensions and suggests possibilities for further research

Parmenides on the True and Right Names of Being

Parmenides as a knowing mortal (F I. 3) writes a philosophical-poetic account of a travelogue in which distinctive voices (F. 2) that are a mixture of myth and logos come out of an unnamed goddess (F I. 23) who didactically speaks with an unnamed young man as her direct listener and addressee (F II. 1) in order to reveal for him different spheres and routes (F II. 2) of inquiry about a specific referent. In the hybrid and tailored account of the immortal about a specific subject-matter, such as being, we can read different approaches of the thoughtful mortals through the narration of the goddess, and the idea of the immortal herself. And exactly when thoughtful mortals want to introduce their thinking and understanding of the “referent” in human lingual terms they appeal to the act of naming and making names, though there is no explicit account by the immortal about her approach for lingual expressing of the referent. Such an account gives us some useful and distinctive hints about Parmenides’ conception as a mortal about naming/names which makes his conception in a specific position in regard to the other pertinent and close words, such as ἔπος/ἔπεα, ῥῆμα, ἔργον, καλεῖν, λόγος and Presocratic thinkers like Heraclitus, Democritus, and Empedocles. According to the immortal’s account, in relation to naming and names thoughtful mortals can be classified mainly into two groups: (1) Those who are in Aletheia are informed of the distinctive features of the referent that is a “totality” and should be able to make “true” names for it but fail (F8. 38-39). If they succeeded, then their naming and names are true/ ἀληθῆ; and (2) those who are in Doxa think to know the features of the referent that is a “dual” and accordingly thoughtful mortals make names. Though all of names that are made are not unacceptable, one set is acceptable/χρεών (F 8. 54). As a result, we can infer that if Parmenides as a thoughtful mortal wants to express his thought about eon in lingual terms, he should appeal to naming and making names for they have specific dynamis (F IX. 2—a term that appears in Plato’s Cratylus 394b) in communicating the nature of any specific referent. The first best situation or Aletheia is where on the basis of his “knowledge”, he can communicate the distinctive features of eon in names and thereby make “true” names. Besides, there is the second best or Doxa, where he can communicate his “beliefs” about the essence and essential features of eon in names and make “acceptable” names.

Revealing the Hydrocene: Reflections on Watery Research

This reflective paper shares considerations of curatorial research of art and water during the current climate crises as part of both contemporary art and Blue Humanities fields. This paper shares water-based methods utilised to develop the Hydrocene, the water-based curatorial theory I have named and defined as an act of curatorial planetary caretaking. In my doctoral thesis, Ingesting the Hydrocene, I argue that water, this most vital of materials, is the central figure of the climate crisis and that a zeitgeist of groundbreaking artists cultivate critical and collaborative methods of relating with water from which we must learn. The Hydrocene as a curatorial theory reveals hitherto unexamined curatorial perspectives on the interrelation of art and water in acts of planetary climate care. The act of naming and defining this artistic tide as the Hydrocene, is a curatorial act of caretaking returning to the epistemological origins of the curator as caretaker. The flow-on effect of the art of the Hydrocene is the potential for more radical ways of relating to water ethically. Sharing the Hydrocene and the complexities of a sustained dedication to learning from and with water in the field of art, this paper aims to illuminate the way water offers intellectual, emotional, physical and metaphorical sustenance to myself and the artists I work with. In return for this wealth of knowledge from water, I aim to recognize waters own agency, power and adaptability, and to enter into principled collaborations with it.

Undoing Patrilineality: New Maternal Families and the Politics of Naming in Turkey

Abstract Based on the topical life stories of fifteen single mothers from Turkey, this article traces the act of naming as a practice of social and legal boundary making and as a means of undoing patrilineality and to seek acknowledgement for a new maternal family. Analyzing the politics of naming in the stories of these single mothers, this contribution first discusses the stigmatizing aspects of conventional patrilineal and marital family naming in Turkey. It traces changes in the registration of family names, how single mothers decide on the registration of the father’s first name, and their concerns and strategies during these legal, bureaucratic procedures. Whereas family law reform has given more rights to single biological and adoptive mothers, they still remain affected by the emotional aspects of a stigmatized practice. Strategically planning their future and that of their children, one solution is to use naming to merge their maternal families with their own paternal families.

Weepers I, II, III

Weepers I, II, III is a ficto-critical approach to the topic of hospitality, arising from the xacerbating conditions of academic, curatorial and institutional care. Ficto-criticism sidesteps the constraints of non-disclosure agreements and the strictures of the reputational economy, to instead posit a dreaming vision of colliding worlds and meanings. Weepers I, II, III, considers hospitality in three related short fiction works which address the figure of the academic curator: one is an exposition of the linked codes/spheres of migration/contemporary art as it relates to asylum, emancipation and the promise of art world economies by focusing on the conditions of the security guard within a major art museum; a second examines the self-determination of a series of ‘wipers’—carers hired, groomed, academicized and ultimately fetishized, to wipe the tears of crumbling academics as a form of corporeal hospitality; to a vignette of interspecies escape and conversion, following the heart attack and subsequent cellular changes that free the academic’s father from his former life. Through these interlinking stories of grief and loss, also come the act of naming and inventing, side-stepping instrumentalized forms of academic writing to posit a dream-time, a curatorial and academic imaginary that, freed from the reputational economy and non-disclosure clauses of the career curator, dares speak its name. In form and methodology, this approach suggests an approach to an opening and a form of resistance to hospitalality and its various forms.

O ATO DE NOMEAR NO DISCURSO DE ÓDIO CONTRA A MULHER

O ato de nomear é um processo marcado pela constituição de alteridade, em que o outro constitui nosso horizonte social (MOIRAND, 2004; SIBLOT, 1998, 2007). As palavras selecionadas para nomear o outro são carregadas de posicionamentos, apreciações e/ou ideologias. Ao referirmos o nosso outro pela nomeação, dizemos mais de nós mesmos, pois há uma tomada de posição por aquele que nomeia, uma definição de si, sendo este outro uma imagem ou objeto do discurso a ser referido. Considerando como o outro, a mulher vitimizada pela violência pelo fato de ser mulher, objetivamos analisar a nomeação do corpo feminizado no contexto de violência doméstica e familiar contra a mulher até a culminância do feminicídio, cujas agressões são carregadas pelo discurso de ódio. Temos por questionamento, portanto, como a mulher é nomeada no discurso de ódio pelo autor da agressão, no contexto de violência doméstica e familiar contra a mulher, até a culminância do feminicídio? Nosso estudo está inserido na teoria dialógica da linguagem, com bases conceituais no dialogismo, no princípio da alteridade, no posicionamento, no ponto de vista e na apreciação dentro da concepção da nominação e do discurso do ódio, que impera no contexto violento, contra a resistência da vítima.

“Are the genre and the Geschlecht one and the same number?” An inquiry into Alfred Clebsch's Geschlecht

This article is aimed at throwing new light on the history of the notion of genus, whose paternity is usually attributed to Bernhard Riemann while its original name Geschlecht is often credited to Alfred Clebsch. By comparing the approaches of the two mathematicians, we show that Clebsch's act of naming was rooted in a projective geometric reinterpretation of Riemann's research, and that his Geschlecht was actually a different notion than that of Riemann. We also prove that until the beginning of the 1880s, mathematicians clearly distinguished between the notions of Clebsch and Riemann, the former being mainly associated with algebraic curves, and the latter with surfaces and Riemann surfaces. In the concluding remarks, we discuss the historiographic issues raised by the use of phrases like “the genus of a Riemann surface”—which began to appear in some works of Felix Klein at the very end of the 1870s—to describe Riemann's original research.

The Last of the Long Takes: Feminism, Sexual Harassment, and the Action of Change

The surging activism of #MeToo has expanded discussion of the revival of feminism and the role of digital activism, and raised questions about potential for lasting change. This is approached by comparing the featured politics of naming in two eras of feminism: the naming of alleged harassers in #MeToo which originated with the claims against Harvey Weinstein by Hollywood identities in 2017; and the naming of sexual harassment as a workplace issue by feminist activists in the 1970s. Anita Hill’s testimony to the US Senate against Clarence Thomas in 1991 is a bridging episode between the eras to which Lauren Berlant responded with her theory of Diva Citizenship and her argument that change depends on the action of the body politic in response to the Diva Citizen. I argue that the historical naming of sexual harassment was a crucial first stage in any lasting change.

Games with names

Abstract This paper discusses deliberate changes surrounding the practice of naming (people and objects). I first present a discussion of naming and healing, and then turn to the act of naming as an active agent for language change in the context of praise names and names that are used as comments on social change. There are particularly rich areas where the deliberate, creative change of language is strikingly visible, namely in tourism. The analysis of both the deliberate linguistic manipulations and the rationalization of these is informed by African philosophy and local metalinguistic discourse, as part of a project often referred to as the ‘Southern Theory’. I consider the philosophical and theoretical concepts of language and language change that stem from Kenyan and Tanzanian intellectuals and experts who are interested in emic approaches and local epistemologies, emphasizing cultural and social contexts of doing things with words. Intentional language change is seen in this contribution as complex and performative, and is analyzed as the result of individual agency as well as a community’s agreement over what might be done with words.

On Genesis

Abstract In this roundtable response to Joy Ladin's “Genesis of Gender,” the author affirms the possibilities for a theology of liberation arising from the book of Genesis but places a greater emphasis on humanity's cocreative and subcreative role in generation of gender. The author unpacks the act of naming in Genesis 2, specifically God's instruction for humanity to assign names to animals as the first act in a series of assigning meaning, associations, and genders to creation. The author argues that this role is complicated by the command to increase and multiply, which expands and transforms both creation and subcreative names of gender. This dynamism in creation and subcreation should prompt the regular liberation from inaccurate and oppressive gender identities, allowing for a greater degree of self-naming and self-composition.

Embodied Molecular Translation: My Not-So-Personal Experience of Translating Spivak and Haraway

Embodied Molecular TranslationMy Not-So-Personal Experience of Translating Spivak and Haraway Chun-Mei Chuang (bio) As a social scholar and translator located in Taiwan, an island with multiple colonization in East Asia, I have come to realize that the work of translation is an embodied experience and implies molecular movements that unceasingly traverse preexisting boundaries and frequently rework them. These border-crossing processes happen at many levels and constitute what I have called "molecular translation." Molecular translation occurs whenever a thinker/translator comes across texts of different languages or paradigms and thereby works to stretch the boundaries of her own linguistic and cultural boundaries (Chuang 2019, 2016, 2012). Crossing boundaries can certainly be a pleasure, but also comes with political responsibility and ethical burden of reconstituting new borders. What is the relationship between different notions of translation in different disciplines? Linguistic and cultural translation is molecular in the sense that it is continually crossing, negotiating, and reworking the previous boundaries between different linguistic and cultural systems. The processes of molecular translation also cut through the fictional dichotomy of culture and nature, not to mention the so-called human and natural sciences. The material standpoint of the translator is also embedded in one's work of translation along with the broader historical-material situation. We are living in an ever-expanding web woven with heterogeneous elements that, originally or accidentally, came from [End Page 129] different local ecological systems. The historical encounter of different cultures as ecological systems is often violent, colonialist, and traumatic, transformative in some aspects and destructive in others. The molecular turn in contemporary sciences has highlighted the fact that various complicated molecular mechanisms work to sustain our bodies and the physical worlds, indeed our universe. Molecular biologists have used terms like "transcription," "translation," and "replication" to describe the organic processes in the transfer of messages and the making of proteins. Naming and description are actions more than speeches. Scientists' naming and description actively participate in the emergence of the scientific object. The act of naming and describing is performative, as Karen Barad (2007) points out. It is imperative to remember that scientific glossary like "molecular translation" is already a metaphorical trope borrowing from other disciplines or fields, including literature and physics. Translation can mean many things: change of position, a transformation of meaning, or both. The metaphor of writing is ubiquitous in the scientific discourse and technological industry of life. Indeed, as Donna Haraway (1991) suggests, DNA has become "the code of codes." The interdisciplinary catachresis is a revealing case. Catachresis means "misuse." It could mean a "wrong word" for a specific context or a semantic error. The "incorrect" use or abuse of words, however, often overflows, stretches, and redefines a semantic horizon. The distinction between a correct and incorrect use of a word is not always easy to make. This is what happens in Gayatri Spivak's notion of "postcolonial catachresis." Following the legacy of deconstruction, Spivak (1999, 251) cautions us that the operation of catachresis is bound to "the empirical." Otherwise, we might be caught in the unproductive dichotomy between the theoretical and the practical. The detachment of the concept-metaphor from the empirical can lead to reification of a concept. A catachresis can be performative and productive when one learns how to avoid conceptual reification, what Alfred Whitehead calls the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, or even a version of conceptual fetishism, such as the common mistake of genetic fetishism in popular science (Haraway 1997, 141–148). In my experience of translating Spivak's A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999) and Haraway's Simians, Cyborgs and Women (1991) as well as other academic works into Chinese texts in Taiwan, it was difficult if not impossible to draw a line between the personal and the public. There is no such thing as a personal translation of feminist works in Taiwan, or in any part of the world, especially in the so-called "non-Western" societies. The personal is political, and the public is always already personal in terms of feminist politics, writing, and translating. It is never simply about the so-called "introduction of ideas." It cannot help but involve constant embodied...

The Polyhedral Victim and the Patchwork Abuser: A Comparative Study of Names and Naming in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955) and Maria Velho da Costa's Myra (2008)

In this article, I compare the function of names and the act of naming in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955) and Maria Velho da Costa's Myra (2008). I situate Nabokov's decision to write a narrative from the perspective of a male abuser and Velho da Costa's centring her novel on a female victim in the specific contexts in which these works were published. Whereas Lolita stands as a challenge to North American obscenity laws in the 1950s, Myra was written against the backdrop of a child abuse scandal, involving a state orphanage and powerful men from the Portuguese elite.