I’m The Dude.

Get Him!

What’s really fun is to write under different names.

It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.

So be it. In my mind the beginning of a life, especially if it seems destined to be a challenging one, deserves the most promising name you can come up with. A beginning kind of name. Like Dawn, Or Hope. Or Aurora.

There is tremendous life and personality in a name. It should be at least as agonized over as any character trait.

Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.

Letitia! What a name. Halfway between a salad and a sneeze.

Be still. Remember my name. It is the label that is attached to me. It is the one thread that is sewn through this entire story. Your story or my story – it is only the stitching that changes. The want is the thing that drives us. Trust me: I have a story to tell.

Most of us have nicknames—annoying, endearing, embarrassing.But what about your true name?It is not necessarily your given name. But it is the one to which you are most eager to respond when called.Ever wonder why?Your true name has the secret power to call you.

Malavika Vishwanath. Don’t try to say it you’ll just piss me off.

None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. They seemed far closer...

No man, no power, can bind the action of wizardry or still the words of power. For they are the very words of Making, and one who could silence them could unmake the world.

Glad you’re back to normal. The makeup and the dress were a lot more intimidating than the dagger.””Get going, Sparky, before I skewer you.””Sparky?

Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth’s marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

None of us have a real name, Leonidas, just names we like and names people give us.

I woke with my name singing in my ears. It was a beautiful sound, music unlike any in the world. It made me wish that everything could have such a name. Not just people, but animals and villages, and roads and kingdoms, even mountains.

Suppose we pick a name for him, eh?” Caius Pompeius stepped over and eyed the child. “He looks a little like my proconsul, Marcus. We could call him Marcus.” Josiah Worthington said, “He looks more like my head gardener, Stebbins. Not that I’m suggesting Stebbins as a name. The man drank like a fish.” “He...

No,” said the cat. “Now, you people have names. That’s because you don’t know who you are. We know who we are, so we don’t need names.

They called him John Storm: John after his grandfather, but Storm after his father and his mother.

Medusa has been called many worse things around here, including ‘diseasedpincushion,’ and ‘perambulating cactus.’

On the outside of the bedroom door there was a plaque that said Valerie. On the way up, Jackson noticed that other bedrooms also had names – Eleanor, Lucy, Anna, Charlotte.Jackson wondered how you decided on a name for a room. Or a doll. Or a child, for that matter. The naming of dogs seemed...

Names.What’s in a name, really? I mean, besides a bunch ofletters or sounds strung together to make a word. Does arose by any other name really smell as sweet? Would themost famous love story in the world be as poignant if it wascalled Romeo and Gertrude? Why is what we callourselves so important?

They say a name expresses the thing it stands for, but I wonder if it isn’t the other way around—the thing gets more and more like its name.

You used,” he said, and then took a sharp breath, “to call me Augustus.

[speaking of a friend named Lavendar Lewis] ‘I think her parents gave her the only right and fitting name that could possibly be given her,’ said Anne. ‘If they had been so blind as to name her Elizabeth or Nellie or Muriel she must have been called Lavendar just the same, I think. It’s so...

Oh, it makes SUCH a difference. It LOOKS so much nicer. When you hear a name pronounced can’t you always see it in your mind, just as if it was printed out? I can; and A-n-n looks dreadful, but A-n-n-e looks so much more distinguished. If you’ll only call me Anne spelled with an E...

I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.

A label assigned to identify you either by this institution or your departed parents is neither of interest nor value to me. If you find you are in need of a name at any point, you may choose one for yourself. For now it will not be necessary.

Does it, does it—I’m flailing here—does it have a name? What you’ve done?If it had a name, he says, what would that change, exactly? Would it be more acceptable to you? Would it be a thing people do? Would it have a category unto itself?

My son’s name will be Sonya, like his mother, whose name will be Dadya.

Once you get to naming your laptop, you know that you’re really having a deep relationship with it.

I like the name Lola, because it has LOL in the beginning.

We commonly speak as though a single ‘thing’ could ‘have’ some characteristic. A stone, we say, is ‘hard,’ ‘small,’ ‘heavy,’ ‘yellow,’ ‘dense,’ etc. That is how our language is made: ‘The stone is hard.’ And so on. And that way of talking is good enough for the marketplace: ‘That is a new brand.’ ‘The potatoes...

She felt as if the grave stones were whispering those names to her as she walked past… Those stones that bore no names seemed like closed mouths, sad mouths that forgotten how to speak. But perhaps the dead didn’t mind what their names had once been?

She is a famous artists’ model who claims to have been christened Topaz – even if this is true there is no law to make a woman stick to a name like that.

If I had my clone take a test for me, it’s likely I’d misspell my own name. And I’m terrible at remembering people’s names—even if that person is me.

Hey, what is that over there?” and I pointed over your shoulder, and when you turned to look I scribbled my name on the bottom of page one.

I’m, like, really bad at remembering names.

Common folk didn’t have last names in the 8th and 9th centuries.

I suppose it’s the name: there’s a deal in the name of a tune.

William Hurt has a painful last name. Kevin Love has a name perfect for February 14th. But what about Johnny Longdong? Where does he fit?

There are women named Faith, Hope, Joy, and Prudence. Why not Despair, Guilt, Rage, and Grief? It seems only right. ‘Tom, I’d like you to meet the girl of my dreams, Tragedy.’ These days, Trajedi.

You named your sword Fire? Fire? What kind of a boring name is that? You might as well name your sword ‘Blazing Blade’ and be done with it. Fire indeed. Humph. Wouldn’t you rather have a sword called Sheepbiter or Chrysanthemum Cleaver or something else with imagination?

Most people assume because my name is Jarod that I was born Martha proof. But I’m not Martha proof—I’m merely Martha resistant up to 100 meters.

He was comparing you to the butterflies that you both adore and cherish, and he said you were special for the same reasons: you were rare, exotic and entirely you. He said you’re beautiful exactly the way are now.

I always look at Style.com and look at all the designers and I know all the model’s names.

Reddit names are unconnected to real-world identities and it’s commonplace for users to create ‘throwaway’ accounts to reveal sensitive information.

If I could remember the names of all these particles, I’d be a botanist.

Despite a few exceptions, I have found that Americans are now far more willing to learn new names, just as they’re far more willing to try new ethnic foods… It’s like adding a few new spices to the kitchen pantry.