What's in a Name?
“She went by the name of Belisa Crepusculario, not because she'd been born with it or baptized it, but because she herself had searched until she found the poetry of 'beauty' and 'twilight' and cloaked herself in it. She made her living selling words.” - Isabel Allende, The Stories of Eva Luna
That’s one of my all-time favorite quotes from one of my favorite authors because it sums up what writers do: we search. We quest. We travel through time and dictionaries and family trees and mythology and the Internet until we find the idea, the word, the poem, the inspiration we need to write the next thing. I love how Allende captures the importance of a name and how her protagonist searched until she found a name that suited her.
So what’s in a name? Everything, it seems. For my job, we occasionally name companies or products and it is one of the toughest things we do. In addition to trying to capture a company’s essence in ONE or TWO words, we have to make sure the domain name is available and all the social media handles. Pain. In. The. Ass. I once named a set of products (200 of them) after archetypes. I named floor plans for a neighborhood after designers and carpenters on a popular TV show. I’m working on a new brand whose name is a nod to naming. So meta, the kids will say.
But for most people, it’s rare to get a chance to name a company or product; they are more likely to name a person or a pet. The opportunity can be delightful, imaginative, and fun (and stressful for some; it’s so permanent!) There is still some googling involved, however: when we named our son, my husband googled one of the names we were considering and the top results were for a porn star so . . . yeah, we dropped that option and instead gave him a whiskey for his middle name. <sigh>
So how did we come up with Malfi as the name for our newest family member? Hunter was playing around with Star Wars names of more obscure characters, and we never once “had a bad feeling about this.” (If you know, you know.)
I was reminiscing about the last time we saw extended family, July of 2019, in Italy - in the “before times.” Before Covid made it so we only saw one another on Zoom.
Three magical weeks culminating in a week on the Amalfi coast in a charming villa overlooking the Mediterranean sea with jaw-dropping sunsets over Mt. Vesuvius that gave way to a “belisa crepusculario” every night.
Hunter loved the idea of a reminder of family and fun and since the puppy was joining our family, we all fell in love with the idea of naming him “Malfi.” Hunter explains: “We haven’t seen family in a while and the last time the whole family got together was at the Amalfi coast and Malfi is short for that and it’s cute like a dog’s name.”
Ciao. Meet Malfi. Cute indeed!
He went by the name of Malfi, not because he’d been born with it, but because his paw family searched until they found a name that reminded them of love, and beauty, and most importantly, the enduring ties of family. May he know our love.
I know y’all have some stories of names. Dish! Do Tell! Spill! Tell me all the things.