What's In a Name?

In my line of work, you come across a lot of names.

My first foray into the land of cubedom had me at a desk, punching numbers into the 10-key pad while scanning the screen for certain codes to appear, over and over again in mind numbing repetition.

Well, not really mind numbing, actually, because your brain doesn't really go numb when forced to do work that doesn't really require it.

In fact, the book* I'm reading right now talks about an interesting phenomenon that occurs when people are stuck doing a task that, after awhile, requires very little active brainpower to sustain. In the story they talked about security--specifically, a guard whose job it is to sit outside an exit door and make sure that no one comes in that way. Inevitably, no matter how vigilant the guard is, he or she will be unable to maintain a state of alertness and someone will get by. It just isn't entertaining enough for your brain to scan for someone going upstream constantly, when so few actual incidents occur. The theory in the book is that it's not their fault. Their brains get rewired and they can't do it.

Literally, the neuron pathways that are being used for the boring, mundane or repetitive task get suborned into working for other parts of the brain even while carrying out the task they were originally signed up for. Neal Stephenson explained it much more hip manner via his character Richard in the book:


"The brain, as far as Richard could determine from haphazard skimming of whatever came up on Google, was sort of like the electrical system of Mogadishu. A whole lot was going on in Mogadishu that required copper wire for conveyance of power and information, but there was only so much copper to go around, and so what wasn't actively being used tended to get pulled down by militias and taken crosstown to beef up some power-hungry warlord's private, improvised power network. As with copper in Mogadishu, so with neurons in the brain. The brains of people who did unbelievably boring shit for a living showed dark patches in the zones responsible for job-related processes, since all those almost-never-exercised neurons got pulled down and trucked somewhere else and used to beef up the circuits used to keep track of NCAA tournament brackets and celebrity makeovers."


So you see, I can't be held entirely to blame that during my tenure as a data entry pusher, my brain would co-opt some neurons in favor of more hip and intriguing things.

Such as looking at the names on my reports and deciding which ones would be good character names in D&D or in a nebulous, unrealized, yet to be written novel.

First, last, middle, first middle, middle middle, it didn't matter--all were potential veins of name-ore that I could mine as I keyed furiously away. I discovered that I liked certain vowel combinations ("ae" "ai" and "ei" being my favs) and over time my list developed a certain cadence all its own. Many of the features in our Dungeons & Dragons Kortoe adventure world we created were given names from my list. One of the founders even had a name generator that would give you related-sounding names if you fed it some examples first. They ended up sounding very Greek-like, with names like Taephone and Aestrom.

The Big B doesn't know it yet, but when it comes time to name our children, some of my inspiration will be coming from this list as well. I already know this will be an epic battle for us, so I am prepared to get my fun in at the same time.

Maybe someday someone will see a name from the list, scratch their head, and say, "That's weird! This first name is my last name and it's not common, either. I wonder where that name came from."

I know I would wonder if I saw my maiden name used as a first name.

*The book is fantastic--Reamde by Neal Stephenson--and I highly suggest you check it out. It gets rolling slowly at first but when it gets going! whew! it gets going. I became a fan of Stephenson after reading Snow Crash, which not only can get you thinking, but is a rollicking funny read apart from anything else you could say about it. Oh, and it's also awesomely geeky, too.