What's in a name? Quite a bit in my opinion, names have
a huge influence on how we regard both the people and the
objects which bear them. Remember Lord Nelson Lord, the
gentleman on Deer Island who lived in a six by ten shack
with a dozen cats? His life was warped because he couldn't
live up to the image of his name, and he became an object
of ridicule. I'm going to do his biography one day, I'm
already collecting material, even artifacts. His shack has
been pulled down and his cats scattered to the winds, but
I was able to salvage a few bits of cedar shingle from what
used to be his roof. His is an excellent example of the
influence a name can have on a life. My name is a good case
in point as well. How would you like to carry a name that
suggested you might be a cross between a donkey and an ox,
a donkox. Enough years with a name like that will lead you
to forsake a life as a promising physicist and flee screaming
into a career as a little-read humourist.
I think I've made the point with people's names, now what
about the names of things. Let's consider myopia. It has
a warm personal and possessive feel about it don't you agree.
When people speak about their myopia, they tend to settle
down with a good book and regard the distant world fuzzily.
Now imagine a world where this condition is called youropia.
All of a sudden it would be someone elses fault that you
couldn't distinguish the woods from the trees. Or worse
still, you would blame it all on the population of the continent
of Europe. The world scene could be entirely different,
can you imagine Canada at war with Yugoslavia if myopia
were youropia? I can just hear the Prime Minister saying,
"I think we can all see very plainly that this Kosovo
affair is a youropian problem." This is an illustration
of how names can influence international affairs.
Fortunately, astronomy has been rather good with names.
Our forebearers looked skyward and fancied they saw the
Gods. The planets are named after them, Venus the godess
of love and Mars the god of war. Further out we find the
largest planet of them all, Jupiter, named after the big
head honcho God in the ancient Roman pantheon. Then there's
Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and maybe Pluto, all big names in
the hereafter. It's like that with the stars and galaxies
as well, respect is what it's called.
Bearing all that in mind, I could hardly believe my eyes
when I read the Globe last week. Using the Hubble telescope
an astromomer has discovered a galaxy 13 billion light-years
distant, on the very edge of the universe. He named it Sharon,
after his sister who is a 32 year old investment banker.
Everyone stand back please, I think the sky is falling.
Bluebox ©2001 Don Cox
Website ©2001 OttawaWEB
