Naming Your Characters ~ Part 1: The Legitimacy of Labels

Labels. They're good things, really, but I find that they're terribly misunderstood little creatures. My generation of young adults, especially, has lost a lot of respect for them. Yet, insofar as we humans need labels to go about living, they haven't disappeared. They hang about in every aspect of society, quite piously going about the now-thankless chore of calling a thing a thing, because where there exists any sort of community, there labels are bound to be.

Allow me an explanatory tangent. As a not always proud, but rather consistent member of the Internet "FanFiction" community, I've always found myself rather stymied at the absolute hatred people of my generation and younger in this community seem to hold for labels. In middle school, before I discovered the wonders of the PageDown key, I read through quite a bit of the copypasta mess that usually composes a teenager's Fanfiction profile. Amidst the condemnations of this or that social or political persuasion, lists of "secret names" that people created by combining the third letter of their middle name with the name of their pet goldfish, and other odds and ends, I had at least a 45% chance of finding a list of common conceptions and misconceptions about people, which ran in the form of bullet-points reading "I'm [BLANK], so I MUST be [BLANK]". The first blank was usually an objective statement about a particular trait: I'm ASIAN, I'm OVERWEIGHT, I'm SINGLE, I'm PAGAN, I'm in THEATRE. The second blank was a (typically unflattering) popular assumption about that trait: ugliness, nerdiness, naivety, lack of self-control. The bullet point that generally came at the end of the list read "I'm a PERSON, so I MUST be LABELED."

In a way, I understand this desire to avoid labels. I belong to the same generation, the just-barely-pretending-to-be-adults who grew up surrounded by dirty politicians and misleading advertisements and grown-ups who fed us egotistical lies about what we were and how we should live our lives in a misguided effort to help. We were taught from the cradle to seek genuineness, and we can't seem to find it anywhere.

But guess what? We'll never find it, never be able to express it, without labels.

To give the most appropriate definition of the word label, from Merriam-Webster Online, it is "a word or phrase that describes or identifies something or someone."

Your names, any and all of them, are labels. Your college major is a label. Your job title is a label. Your age, your eye color, your handedness, your religious beliefs, your preference of dogs over cats, are all labels. That you have them is a good thing.

Perhaps we've lost so much respect for labels because we think of labels as belonging only to things, like the sticker that goes on a peanut butter jar. This only illustrates my point. I, myself am not a fan of peanut butter, and while I still have to deny to some of my friends that this indicates disorder in my soul, I think they would agree with how rightly miffed I would be if someone gave me a jar of peanut butter that was labeled 'Hazelnut Spread'. People in communities use labels to identify everything around them, including other people. If you admit to having an identity, then you'd better have a label. Without one, you can't communicate your identity to others.

This is why I find the critique of labels unconvincing and foolish, especially coming from people who claim to be authors. An author, by definition, engages in the high and profound act of human communication. How can you illustrate for your readers the identity of your heroes, without labeling them? How can you explain their vocations, their values, their feelings and opinions, without labeling them? You can't.

Now, if it is improper labeling that offends you so much, I can agree. Just as I would much rather not slather my bagel with peanut butter because I have a jar of peanut butter that says "Hazelnut Spread" on it, I would also not like to call a character Whitney or Martin or Goemethris* who by all rights ought to be called John. But this doesn't make Whitney, or Martin, or Goemethris bad labels in and of themselves. They are simply labels that cannot be owned by my character called John.

What I really think the teens online are protesting is a misguided reliance on stereotypes. tereotypes are really a subset of labeling, in which one type of label is, rightly or wrongly, always associated with a certain group of other labels. But this is getting long, and I can talk about stereotypes another time.

In brief, labels, when used properly to describe truth, must command the utmost respect.

End Part 1

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD1hrZBXKjk
(The relevant bit occurs at about 2:30)

Exposition

"The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story." --Ursula K. LeGuin

I created this blog quite a while ago, and have elected to place nothing upon it until now, when I believe I have tripped out a passable introduction to this thing that I have chosen to call Legenda.

Unfortunately for you, an introduction to Legenda involves an introduction to myself. That introduction basically consists of this: I see stories everywhere. Stories of good and evil, love and hatred, life and death. Human stories. Divine stories.

Each person, obviously, has a long, grand story composed of even smaller stories, which they share with the other people involved in them, and so on. Things and places also have stories. A creative writing course, or a particularly good history teacher, or even a cracked cell phone screen that launches you into narrative mode whenever someone questions it may have taught you. Some places and things hold more obvious stories than others. For example, I almost immediately recognize stories in things like abandoned houses, or used keys. I find it much more difficult to see the stories that might exist in, say, a brand-new Styrofoam cup, or a pack of lightbulbs.

Second, this is a blog about stories, which means that it is a blog about everything. Everyday stories of the people who float in and out of daily life will be mixed with fantasy stories about the people who float about in my head. History, the knowledge and lessons of those who have gone before, might blend with philosophy, in this case used to mean the beliefs and attitudes that motivate the characters around me. Mentions of and musings on virtue, justice, mercy, choices, responsibilities, duties, leisure, entertainment, community, friendship, joy, death, life, and love will crop up from time to time. Above all, there will be ample meditations on central player in the greatest story of all time: the story of the world, its fall, and its redemption.

Above I have placed a selected quote from author Ursula K. LeGuin: "The unread story is not a story". I could ruminate for a bit about how a greater variety of "unwritten" stories are read every day, as human beings bear witness to the events in the lives of other human beings, but I shall save that rumination for another time, perhaps another post. But it seems essentially true that stories of all sorts require audiences.

And here we return to the naming of this thing I call Legenda. The word legenda, from what I can understand of Internet dictionaries, comes from the medieval Latin meaning "to be read." Above all, I intend for this blog, this fantastically modern story medium, to be read. Perhaps it will be seen by only a few classmates who share my love for stories, or by one or two friends who are kind enough to consider my thoughts, or perhaps only by my solitary pair of eyes as they drift from line to line in the careful contemplation required for editing. But an audience of one is still an audience.

Legenda. It will be read.