Importance Of Names Research Articles

What's in a Name? The Practice and Politics of Classifying Māori Textiles

Textiles form an important part of Māori culture, of interest to Europeans since contact with New Zealand in 1642. The need to describe Māori textiles in English has determined the terminology chosen to describe them, and also affected understandings of Māori weaving. Ethnographic observation and recording of Māori textile production by European non-weavers, inaccurate translation of Māori words, as well as incorrect use of terms have all contributed to difficulties in understanding Māori textile structures. The development of current terminology for describing Māori textiles is discussed, highlighting how it arises as a result of temporal, cultural and political factors, and the consequent importance of names. The values implicit in names given to Māori textiles then affect knowledge, scholarship and communication of their attributes. One Māori textile form, rāranga, illustrates how basing classification on structure alone could clarify understanding, remove implicit value judgements, and enable accurate communication of the properties of artefacts.

On Names and Artistic Unity in the Standard Version of the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic

Great is the importance of names in literature. For modern audiences, good names are an important and enjoyable part of the experience of reading, and many authors have delighted their readers with new creations or especially apposite matches – one could cite examples as varied as J. K. Rowling (Malfoy, Dumbledore, Snape), Aldous Huxley (Tantamount, Burlap, Spandrill), Charles Dickens (Pickwick, Sweedlepipe, Honeythunder), Andrea Camilleri (Catarella, Montalbano, Boneti-Alderighi), or Franz Kafka (K.).

Renaming and Performative Reconstructions: The Uncanny Multiplication of Janez Janša

This article considers the uncanny action by three Slovenian artists in 2007 to rename themselves Janez Janša, the name of the right-wing prime minister of Slovenia. It assesses specific performances by the artists, including the Slovene National Theatre, a postdramatic verbatim piece about a Roma family evicted from their homes by Janša's government in response to the mob action of Slovenian villagers. It also interrogates their performance event for the Transmediale Festival at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin in 2008, first banned and then reinstated by the festival organizers, where they created a virtual signature of their new name on the memorial. Theoretically, the importance of naming and renaming as practised by the artists is examined in relation to concepts of subversive affirmation, the author-function in society and postdramatic theatre.

The Morbidity and Mortality Conference: A Unique Opportunity for Teaching Empathic Communication

The morbidity and mortality conference is an educational tradition in American medicine that dates to the early 20th century. Traditionally, this conference has focused entirely on issues of diagnosis and treatment, in the context of a disappointing clinical outcome. We report on a new method for teaching empathic doctor-patient communication skills at an obstetrics and gynecology morbidity and mortality conference. For each case presented, we identified the communications challenges and allowed faculty and residents to "practice" the discussion they would have with the patient and the patient's family in that situation. In some sessions, actors assumed the role of the patient. Following the discussion of the case, we offered didactic presentations on how we communicate with patients and their families. These focused on techniques for being patient centered and included the use of body language, open-ended questioning, reflective listening before offering to explain, and the importance of naming and validating emotions. The majority of participants felt the sessions to be helpful, and after one month many were able to identify a positive change in their interactions with patients. We believe that this unique teaching format allows learners to refine their communication skills in the context of situations that they know to be both realistic and important.

Virtus Veritatis. Language et vérité dans l'œuvre de Tertullien (review)

Reviewed by: Virtus Veritatis. Language et vérité dans l'œuvre de Tertullien Geoffrey Dunn Frédéric Chapot Virtus Veritatis. Language et vérité dans l'oeuvre de Tertullien Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité 186 Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 2009 Pp. 359. €28.44. Chapot is well qualified for this monograph on Tertullian's reflection on the nature of truth. For more than a decade this French scholar has produced a steady stream of publications, including an edition of Aduersus Hermogenem for Sources Chrétiennes. This is a welcome volume from him and a fine addition to the CEASA. At the end of his second book of Aduersus Marcionem, in which he sought to demonstrate that Marcion's creator god and the God of the Hebrew Scriptures were in fact one and the same good God who is also just, Tertullian produces a maxim (see Aristotle, Rh. 2.21) to justify why he was finishing the book at this point: ". . . the power of truth is quick in action, content with few words . . ." (Evans's translation, expedita uirtus ueritatis paucis amat—Adu. Marc. 2.28.3, although Chapot cites it as 2.29.1 [72, 303]). While here this may simply be a rhetorical tool to justify a short response to an opponent's lengthy exposition, Chapot argues that the truth was a powerful force as far as Tertullian was concerned. He investigates Tertullian's language about truth in the context of the classical and Christian traditions Tertullian inherited. The opening chapter (15–91) is a survey of Tertullian's understanding of truth, particularly with regard to the natural ability to know God (and the obstacle of sin) and the supernatural revelation by God. Of course, Tertullian believed that he was always defending the truth, just as his opponents promoted the opposite. Truth could be discerned from the world of nature or human reasoning: in De uirg. 7–8 Tertullian argued about the logic of the order of nature to argue for the truth (Adu. Val. 3; Adu. Marc. 1.18), yet in another work (De test. 1), while there may be elements of the truth in the teaching of non-Christian philosophy, there was so much that was untrue in it that is was less than reliable. The only sure way to know the truth was through God's revelation (Apol. 18), centered in Christ and further revealed through the Spirit, a point no doubt important in Tertullian's Montanist phase. That revelation is contained in Scriptures and expressed through the rule of faith (De praescr.). This leads into the second chapter (93–153) on how the truth guides active Christian life. After an overview of Christianity within the pagan environment, Chapot considers how adherence to the truth enables Christian resistance to that world of idolatry opposed to the truth, according to Tertullian. Christian life must conform to the will of God. This applied equally to heretic Christians as to non-Christians (De praescr. 40). In the third chapter (155–232) the focus shifts Christian behavior to Christian thinking, particularly to the importance of language in revealing the truth about God. What is highlighted here is the importance of naming and correct definition. Associated with that is the matter of the interpretation of revelation, and who has the right interpretation. Chapot draws attention to the importance [End Page 336] of proprietas in Tertullian. The last part of the chapter considers Tertullian's understanding of falsehood. The final chapter (233–301) explores Tertullian's etymological and allegorical analysis of language in his quest for the truth against both pagans and heretics. The overall relationship between this chapter and the theme of the book is less firmly established than in the previous chapters and unless one is interested in semantics this chapter is a more difficult read than the others. Nevertheless there is a wealth of valuable analysis here on Tertullian's style as an author for the persistent reader. This is a well-written work in French that will be of value to the scholar. The bibliography is fine, reflecting a familiarity with most of the relevant research in the major modern languages, and the indices are...

The Company They Keep

Page 18 American Book Review The Company They Keep Jeanetta Calhoun Mish of constructing an anthology for use as a textbook in a course on Native literature or as one of several texts in a women’s literature course by choosing “depth over breadth,” including several stories by each of the fifteen writers, and by severing stories from novels so the instructor could squeeze them into an undergraduate course which could not possibly discharge Almanac of the Dead (1992) during a single semester. The weaknesses of the anthology are directly related to the compromises necessary to achieve the form of an undergraduate textbook. Several of the stories are frustratingly truncated and do not accurately represent their author’s storytelling abilities. The informational and definitional footnotes to the stories are vaguely irritating and repetitious. Also, if a regular reader of NativeAmerican literature opens this collection hoping for new stories from his or her favorite authors, he or she will be disappointed; with the exception of one story each by Paula Gunn Allen, Kimberly M. Blaeser, and Patricia Riley, all the works by established Native women writers are reprints or excerpts. The anthology does present previously unpublished stories by three emerging writers: Misha Nogha, Beth H. Piatote, and Reid Gómez. The most intriguing aspect of Reckonings is its meta-storytelling— most of the stories are stories about the power of stories. Despite the problems associated with its function as a textbook, the compelling and powerful stories in the collection make it worth reading and rereading . Paula GunnAllen’s previously unpublished story, “Burned Alive in the Blues,” is wryly magical and poignant. It captures the West Coast urban Indian experience in the 60s, and will surely find a home in collections of 60s stories and music tales. Beth E. Brant’s contributions, “Turtle Gal” and “Swimming Upstream,” and Patricia Riley’s rural character study, “Damping Down the Road,” reveal the difficulty of contemporary Native life, the torn and ragged fabric of almost-forgotten cultural traditions, and the possibilities inherent in the conscious reconstruction of family, tribe, and tradition. Janet Campbell Hale is not as well known as other Native women writers of her generation such as Linda Hogan, Joy Harjo, and Leslie Marmon Silko—all of whom who also contributed to this volume—but Hale’s “Claire,” an emotionally satisfying and pitch perfect story of a wise grandmother who escapes from the confines of an “old people’s home” then finds her way back to her tribal homeland, will surely gain for the writer a renewed and expanded appreciation of her talents.Anita Endrezze contributes two entertaining, contemporary re-fashionings of tribal myths, and Kimberly M. Blaeser’s entry, “Growing Things,” would make an enchanting film treatment for a NativeAmerican romantic comedy . Anna Lee Walters muses on the importance of names in “Buffalo Wallow Woman” and “Las Vegas, New Mexico, July 1969” and the vulnerability of raced, gendered poverty in “Apparitions .” Linda Hogan’s “Descent” is a quietly transfixing and ultimately righteous story of a girl’s kinship to a panther. As most readers would expect, the stories by Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Louise Erdrich are brilliantly conceived and masterfully wrought. However, the pieces by Silko and Erdrich suffer somewhat from the loss of their original context, but perhaps readers who have not encountered the authors’novels would not be aware of the diminution. Of the established writers’stories, only Diane Glancy’s selections fail to stand up to the company they keep; they are neither as fierce nor as mesmerizing as other stories in the collection. The three emerging authors, Gómez, Nogha, and Piatote, are fine writers. Nogha’s two stories display postmodern traits; they resist narrative, relying on imagery and inference to effect the experience of living in two oftentimes antagonistic worlds. Gómez’s terrific linked tales of Native women resisting Western psychiatric medicine’s mistreatment of cultural and spiritual sickness stay with the reader long after the book is closed, and Piatote’s “Life-Size Indian” honestly calculates the alienating effects of exoticism on Native Americans. In the end, the outstanding writing overcomes the irritations of the anthology’s weaknesses. For a seasoned reader of...

Island of Shattered Dreams (review)

Reviewed by: Island of Shattered Dreams Paul Sharrad Island of Shattered Dreams, by Chantal T Spitz. Translated by Jean Anderson. Wellington, NZ: Huia Press, 2007. Distributed by University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu. ISBN 978-1-86969-299-5. 163 pages. Paper, US$19.00. How difficult it is to assess a pioneering literary work. It is ahead of its time when it appears, marks an awakening occasioned by things already past, and yet is so much of its time that later readers can have trouble appreciating its significance as a contribution that cleared the way for the works and cultural conditions with which audiences today are more familiar. Chantal T Spitz is a pioneer of indigenous fiction from Tahiti, and the French version of this book, L'île des rêves écrasés (1991), created a scandal in Papeete for blowing apart the myth of happy egalitarianism under French assimilation; for openly criticizing the complicity of local elites in the destruction of Mä'ohi culture and self-respect; and for attacking France's nuclear testing in the Pacific. A text conflicted in its own workings and centrally engaged in the social conflict of the times, the novel charts the path to a younger generation of politically aware Islanders equipped with the skills and confidence to write about their troubled worlds. Island of Shattered Dreams tracks the love affairs and family generations of Tahitian and mixed-race people within a colonial color hierarchy, showing the struggle to maintain cultural continuity and a sense of belonging in the face of growing alienation of soul and separation from land. It moves in a present-tense flow interspersed with poetic outpourings at moments of emotional stress (births, separations, realizing new loves) and takes as its historical beginning the departure of the son, Tematua, to fight for France in World War Two. This and the subsequent movements of Tematua's children are framed by competing epigraphs: the Polynesian and Biblical creation stories, and a historical prophecy about the "fatal impact" of colonial contact. The importance of names is highlighted by the narrator, making clear the impulse to employ allegory, both in the sense of the central couple representing Tahiti as a whole, and individual characters (eg, Tematua as strength) acting parts in what amounts to a morality play. This is consistent with Pacific theatrical conventions and helps novice readers faced with a groundbreaking text to see the significance of the plot. In retrospect, and from the outside, it can also make the book seem a bit contrived. This is not helped by the narrator "loading the dice" with regular commentary: "The descendants of the former royal family are proud to donate a few hectares of their ancestral lands to the Central Administration, a first sign of the bankruptcy of a people that loses its soul when it sells its land" (60; reviewer's italics). Hostile responses to the original work (in part because characters were recognizable from real life) may well have been aggravated by this insistent, strident style, though it was possibly necessary at the time to shock readers into action. There are echoes of the rhetorical violence of John Kasaipwalova's protest poem from Papua New Guinea, "Naked Flame" (including the hot-cold imagery of [End Page 190] native passion versus Western leaching of pride) in conformity with the early protest phase of literary production in a decolonizing country's cultural politics. This imagery of explosively hot feeling serves as a link to the nuclear testing in the second half of the novel, and while its positive Tahitian aspect is at odds with the disastrous French intervention, the human associations of the former make the latter seem an unnatural travesty of civilized values. Robert Nicole has noted that Spitz names one character, Terii, after the lead figure in Victor Segalen's Les Immémoriaux, an outsider's 1907 novel of the tragic impact of European culture (and print media) on Tahitian oral and priestly culture (Nicole, The Word, the Pen, and the Pistol: Literature and Power in Tahiti [2001, 196]). One of the points here is to highlight the fact that, contrary to Segalen's nostalgic clearing away of the romantic past...

On the Importance of Naming: Gender, Race, and the Writing of Policy History

Twenty years ago, just as the study of policy was emerging out of the morass of political history, historians of women rediscovered the state. What I will name the policy turn challenged a kind of intellectual separate sphere in which women's history addressed home, family, and intimate life and left to other historians everything else. The policy turn shifted attention from Carroll Smith Rosenberg's “Female World of Love and Ritual” without losing the self-activity and focus on female difference that investigations of women on their own terms had supplied. It answered the “Politics and Culture” debate of 1980, which revolved around the efficacy of domesticity as an arena for power with a resounding move toward the public, political realm—namely, to social politics. The Reaganite assault on the New Deal order and accompanying New Right attack on women's rights intensified investigation into the origins and growth of a welfare state whose strength seemed precarious and whose history was up for grabs—a welfare state that blurred the separation of private and public and constructed, even as it reinforced, unequal social locations.

Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon: A Casebook

essays in this volume represent the major currents in critical thinking about Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison's widely acclaimed examination of the individual quest for self-knowledge in the context of the African-American experience. This collection offers a broad overview of the scholarship that has emerged in the decades since the 1977 publication of Morrison's third novel. These essays provide a map of the primary themes of Song of Solomon, covering subjects such as self-identity, the rituals of manhood and reading, and the importance of naming, and also explore the novel's incorporation of African myth and African-American folklore. casebook opens with The People Could Fly, the African folktale from which Song of Solomon draws important aspects of its plot and major theme, and closes with an interview with Toni Morrison about her life and work as a novelist.

Factors Influencing Crown Placement of Oats (Avena Sativa L.)

The depth of the grass crown nodes in the soil influences the susceptibility of the crown to environmental and management conditions which can affect grass establishment success and grain and forage yield levels. A controlled environment experiment was conducted to quantify the effect of planting depth (38 and 76 mm), temperature (25 and 10 degrees C), and light (full light [900 micromoles m(2) sec(-1)] and shaded at 55% full light [500 micromoles m(2) sec(-1)] on the elongation of oat (Avena sativa L. 'Valley') seedling internodes and the resulting final crown placement. The mesocotyl and 1st leaf internode increased in length with increased planting depth with no significant interactions. The length of the 2nd leaf internode increased more when developed under 25 degrees C temperatures than under 10 degrees C (significant temperature X depth interaction). However, the 2nd leaf internode elongated more under low light (55% full light) compared to full light (significant light X depth interaction). The 3rd leaf internode length was the same for the 38 and 76 mm planting depths when developed at 10 degrees C and under 55% full light. At 10 degrees C-full light and 25 degrees C-55% light, the deep planting depth resulted in increased 3rd leaf internode elongation, while at 25 degrees C-full light, the 3rd leaf internode was longer when developed from 38 mm planting depth (significant temperature X light X depth interaction). The ultimate elongation of these internodes resulted in the depth and structure of the final oat crown. This study points out the importance of naming and knowing each internode since the internodes do not respond in similar manner to environmental conditions. When all factors resulting in oat crown depth location and structure are considered, one expects crowns of oat seedlings developed under 10 degrees C to contain 4 nodes somewhat separated and crowns containing only 3 nodes more widely separated under temperature conditions of 25 degrees C. The most compact crown developed under reduced light conditions, from 38 mm planting depth, and a temperature of 10 degrees C. This information concerning the morphology of crown structure and location is expected to be similar for annual and perennial forage grasses with an oat type seedling morphology when seeded at similar temperatures, light intensities, and planting depths.

Calling, Naming, and Coming of Age in Ernest Gaines's “A Gathering of Old Men”

AbstractIn his 1983 novel, A Gathering of old Men, Ernest Gaines deploys characters' names so as to point to their implications in a society in which social stratification based on color and race is the norm. He draws his readers' attention to the importance of names by the headings he uses for the novel's monological divisions. The gathering that this novel celebrates, a sign of the old men's maturing, features, among other indications of coming of age, their insistence on being called by their formal names.

Differences in the Given Names of Good and Poor Readers

Of the many researchers who have investigated the psychological importance of names (Dion, 1985; Garwood, 1976; Hargreaves, Coleman, & Sluckin, 1983; McDavid & Harari, 1966), we are especially interested in those working on the relationship between student names and the school performance of those students. Busse and Seraydarian (1978), for example, found significant correlations between students' first name desirability, as rated by peers, and their school readiness, IQ, and school achievement. Harari and McDavid (1973) required teachers to evaluate fifth-grade essays previously rated by researchers as of equal quality. Writers were identified only by first name. The essays of authors whose names were associated with positive stereotypes were evaluated as being of a higher quality. One interpretation of these findings is that teachers' stereotypic attitudes influence the performance of the children under their care (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). However, the question remains where these stereotypes come from and whether names are partly responsible for these differences. Possible factors differentiating the names include likability (Hargreaves, Colman, & Sluckin, 1983), commonality (Dion, 1985), traditionality (Dion, 1983b), and socio-economic status (Zweigenhaft, 1977). The present study derives from another investigation (Segalowitz & Wagner, 1989) on reading skills in grade 9 students, where we noticed anecdotally that individuals unfamiliar with the subjects or their names could nonetheless consistently differentiate the list of given names of the remedial group from that of the controls. One could not predict the group membership of a single name with accuracy, but each list as a block could be accurately assigned. METHOD

Knowing what to say and wanting to say it: some communicative and structural aspects of single-word responses to questions

ABSTRACTThe interrelation of semantic and communicative factors was considered in three children's single-word responses to adult questions. Parents asked more yes/no than naming questions. Children were able to use yes and no appropriately, but did not always do so. The children seemed to have related the form of yes/no questions to the use of yes/no answers, but communicatively were not always willing or able to produce yes/no answers when required. Naming questions were more often followed by appropriate than by inappropriate utterances. The relation of these findings to the importance of naming in early language acquisition, and to the findings of Horgan (1977) and Steffensen (1977) was considered.