What's In A Name?

Looking at labels in modern day courtship.

William Shakespeare had it wrong in Romeo and Juliet.

I’m not disputing the works of The Great Bard generally, but when Juliet soliloquises: ‘What’s in a name?’ — this does not track with me. The question resembles the notion that the labels we use for one another are solely convention; a way of distinguishing individuals instead of a reflection on our inherent being. Controversial opinion: I think maybe the star-crossed lovers were Scorpio-Taurus adolescents with high hormone levels. They wanted to get laid and annoy their parents. They were aroused by the taboo. It was the essence of coming from opposing families they were attracted to; their appellation was the crux of fatal attraction. It was ALL in the name. 

I’d like to think what Shakespeare refers to is true on some romantic spiritual level; deep soulful connections can transcend names, flesh and bones. If you think about it long enough you might enter an existential pondering about who we really are and what differentiates us. And, sadly, whilst I think Shakesy P was philosophically correct, I don’t believe either the characters of Romeo or Juliet were emotionally mature enough to have grasped that concept. Though, they did live a world before social media — so, perhaps they did have some brain cells left before turning the age of 25.

Leaving the cogitative thespianism behind, I used this question to help me think about what names really mean in modern day courtship. I wonder if Billy Shakes would stand by his testament now? Update: ‘A Bumble profile by another name would feel more swipe-able’. I find myself struggling to match with a Jeremy; not wanting to schedule dates with a Mitch. In a modern day re-telling of the star-crossed lovers (and every app is a tragedy so it would be accurate) Romeo wouldn’t be sexy without the name Romeo. He’d probably be called Will, James or George, like every other middle-class man on there. The young royal of Verona would likely have a vain selfie, a soft-boi prompt in which he tries too hard to sound poetic and yet, ironically would position this next to a photo of him drinking a magnum of rosé, atop a ski slope, while sporting a loud headband. So, unless he looked like Leonardo Di Caprio did at nineteen, or had something on his profile that suggested he didn’t live for the moment Sweet Caroline plays at the end of the night, I’d be taking a pass.

A name is important. It is usually the first bit of information we learn about someone. It’s an introduction. On an app, it is the opening headline. Asking someone’s name is my opener line for flirtation in a real-life encounter with a stranger (I wish there were more of these). Only celebrity children get called kooky things like Brooklyn and Peaches. The rest of us get left with relatively generic identifiers because anything too outlandish is asking for bullying in childhood. I often wonder: would I have a different personality if I’d grown up as a Charlotte or a Harriet instead of a Michaella? Does my slightly less common name give me that je ne sais quoi? Mostly, it means I spend 5 minutes telling every person on a booking system how to spell it; take a deep breath when best friends still get ‘A’ and ‘E’ the wrong way round; And, don’t get me started on the extra ‘L’. I guess my parents did want me to be that little bit extra from birth. 

The names we use when talking about our current courtship to friends are also a representation of our amatory advances. When I was living in Singapore, we used nationality as the standard line of dating questioning. Our ex-pat way of mingling cultures was asking people if they were still dating their ‘temporary Australian boyfriend’ or the ‘Frenchie’. These sobriquets, a placeholder until people were upgraded to a meaningful enough connection to be worthy of their actual names. We do this here too: ‘The guy from Feeld’, ‘Mr Signet Ring’, or ‘The Chicken Nugget Man’ make for a funny stories, but indicate a lack of attachment. Names, in these early stages of dating are not enough to identify people we don’t care enough about. We need something grounded in jollification, until they are worthy of the label the rest of the world knows them by.

Singletons, have whole sections of their Iphone contacts organised by the common British surnames: Bloggs, Bumble, Hinge, Smith. The man I dated following a late-night order in McDonalds is still saved in my phone as ‘J McNugs’. There is the option of saving just the first name, but that’s borderline insane to the highly strung like me. It is the address book equivalent of that perky colleague who signs off serious emails regarding contentious budget cuts with their initial and a kiss. Highly unsettling, unstructured and gets on my nerves.

A surname nowadays is an intimacy indicator. It hasn’t always been this way, though. In my teenage years, I knew everybody’s full name before I met them. Discussing people was a full class registration act. This was for one reason: Facebook. Before the boomers overtook posting low-pixel snaps of group meals and selfies taken with both arms, we were using this platform to review batches of unfiltered photos. Uploaded straight from a digicam to social media, sequential albums named something like: ‘Josh & Charlie’s No.3.’ would see you follow your uploader around a house party, taking selfies (without a front camera) with near enough every person present. You could snoop on snoggers in the background and review highly important uploads of out of focus light bleed betwixt the accidental picture of someone’s footless tights. From these uncut gems, I could revise the surnames (and sometimes middle names) of anyone I met at party. I even knew the full name of the next girlfriend of a heartthrob I had a summer fling with before he knew they would end up together. He never verified this information, but I am sure I am correct. I regularly stalked his tagged pictures of his gap year adventures; she was a common theme in every album. I believe the government should hire heartbroken women in their early 30s to do cyber security; this is a skill we have honed to new levels growing up in a world of low privacy social media accounts. 

Now, we usually learn the surname of someone around the time we sleep with them. Isn’t that mad!? We might see their private parts before we learn their lineage in lexical form. It can happen earlier, maybe we go on a date that requires an email sign up; a music event with a guest list (usually this is me, I am a voracious date planner). Or, you gather intel, eavesdropping when arriving at a restaurant for a reservation they have made. Something like this is catalyst to you finding out their full denomination. That, or you one of you has the courage to ask for this information during pillow talk. It would be strange to sleep with someone and not know their surname. They will always ask it back. You-share-if-I-share, type-thing. And here’s why: a surname offers up another level of vulnerability. Not only a full identity but ultimately something far, far more exposing: LinkedIn.

I know I’m into someone when I find myself reading their professional personal statement. I also know I am not the only person who does this. I have friends who do this, unprompted, on my behalf should I so much as utter a full name to them. They will usually call me with an HR-level analysis of their eligibility as a romantic candidate in my life.  Maybe I should go looking for someone to go for a drink with on LinkedIn? It could cut out all the annoying address book stages before this point.

Positively, the use of a name can also be very powerful. It’s considered. It’s confident. We are ingrained to hesitate using names because we constantly live in fear of getting them wrong. The sexy audacity of someone using my name after a flirtatious comment or at the end of a sincere sentence does things to my soul. ‘It was SO lovely to meet you, Michaella’ is a sure-fire way to my heart. The level of formality will have me weak at the knees. And, don’t get my started on the use of it in the bedroom. If there is a single, hot man reading this – please take note.

The address book, until at a point of full familiarity remains a historical meet cute indicator until you’re ready to level up. Forget exclusivity, there’s an important stage of a relationship before any labels are added. First, the impersonal labels have to be removed and we can upgrade a person to the exact same reference that every other human already knows them by. Why are the people we are looking to share some of our most intimate moments with, restricted from our most common of details? It is confusing. We now live in a world where we want to be on last name terms.