True name

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For the novel, see True Names.
For the term as used in civil law, see true name (legal).

A true name is a name of a thing or being that expresses, or is somehow identical with, its true nature. The notion that language, or some specific sacred language, refers to things by their true names has been central to magic, religious invocation and mysticism (mantras) since antiquity.

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[edit] Folklore

In folklore, knowledge of a true name allows one to magically affect a person or being.[1] Such names could give the person who knew them power even over gods in some beliefs, and the effect is used in many tales.[2]

In Rumpelstiltskin and all its variants, the girl can free herself from the power of a supernatural helper who demands her child by learning its name.[3]

A legend of Saint Olaf recounts how a troll built a church for the saint at a fantastic speed and price, but the saint was able to free himself by learning the troll's name in a walk in the woods.[4] Similarly, the belief that unbaptized children were in particular danger of having the fairies kidnap them and leave changelings in their place may stem from their unnamed state.[5] In the Scandinavian variants of the ballad Earl Brand, the hero can defeat all his enemies until the heroine, running away with him, pleads with him by name to spare her youngest brother.[6]

In Scandinavian beliefs, more magical beasts, such as the Nix, could be defeated by calling their name.[7]

Much of Renaissance demonology is based on the idea of achieving power over a demon by knowledge of its true name.

[edit] In fantasy works

This belief is employed in many fantasy works. Bilbo Baggins, in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, uses a great deal of trickery to keep the dragon from learning his name, it being very foolish to tell a dragon one's name.[8]

In fantasy works where magic works by this rule, characters often go to great lengths to conceal their names; this may be a rule for all characters, as in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, or for those of magical inclination, as in Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away, where a wizard is revived from the dead only by another who found his name, with great difficulty.

Such true names are often the name given at birth. Patricia Wrede, in her novel Snow-White and Rose-Red, had a character not succumb to a spell because the caster did not know the name he was baptized by. In Operation Chaos, Poul Anderson had the doctor who delivered a baby not only issue a regular birth certificate, but a secret one, with the newborn's name; the hero, born before such precautions were routine, is glad to hide his daughter's true name. In the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, a magician cannot have full control over a demon if the demon knows the magician's true name; as a result all magicians have records of their true names destroyed during childhood and take a new name around adolescence.

More arcane means may be needed to find a true name. In Earthsea, a wizard must listen for and give the hero his true name; this is performed in both Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan. In Lawrence Watt-Evans's The Wizard Lord, animals are described as having simple names of only a few syllables, while humans can have almost endless ever-changing names.

A character remembering their true name may be an important means of maintaining mastery of their own life. In Hayao Miyazaki's movie Spirited Away, The witch who runs the bathhouse, Yubaba, ensures loyalty by stealing the names of her subjects. For example, one of the witches most loyal subjects, the spirit of the Kohaku River has his name taken and is given a slave name: Haku. Haku in fact forgets his name, and it is in this way 'taken' from him; he warns Chihiro Ogino against the dangers of forgetting he own name. She frees him when she recognises him and he then remembers and 'takes back' his name and is freed from the clutches of the witch.

In the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, certain spells are more powerful if the target's true name is known.[9] The Tome of Magic supplement presents a number of classes, feats and magical abilities which interact with truenames.

In the cyberpunk genre following Vernor Vinge's 1981 True Names and the work of William Gibson, much of the plot involved interactions between people's virtual selves in cyberspace. Learning a fellow hacker's real-world name (i.e., their "true name") could allow you to turn them in to the government or otherwise blackmail them, conveying a kind of power that could be considered analogous to the equivalent concept of myth and legend. The technological concept of a password (the most common form of access control for present-day computer systems) appears to play no role at all in this genre.


[edit] Linguistic context

Socrates in Cratylus (dialogue) considers the possibility without taking a clear position. Hellenistic Judaism emphasized the divine nature of logos, later adopted by the Gospel of John. The true name of God plays a central role in Kabbalism (see Gematria, Temurah, JHWH) and in to some extent in Sufism (see 100th name of God). Bhartrhari and his followers advocating the sphota theory argued for an identity of word and meaning in spite of the outward (phonetic) form of a word taking various shapes. The early modern efforts towards a philosophical language were the quest to recover the language that refers to all things by their true names.

The notion of a "true name" is related to the field of phonosemantics, the study of a possible intrinsic relationship between sound (the spoken word) and the thing referred to. The opposite position is known as conventionalism. This is the default position of modern linguistics at least since Ferdinand de Saussure (l'arbitraire du signe), although some scholars, such as Otto Jespersen and George Steiner, take an intermediate position, and there is some renewed research in sound symbolism notably by Margaret Magnus and Vilayanur S. Ramachandran.

In the novel Tithe: A Modern Fairy Tale, by Holly Black, the main character, Kaye, is able to force a fairy, Rath Roiben Rye, to do everything she demands him to do by learning his full and true name.

[edit] In cryptography

The term "true name" is sometimes used in cryptography and computer security to refer to a name that is assumed to uniquely identify a principal in a global namespace (for example, an X.500 or X.509 Distinguished name). This usage is often critical, with the implication that use of true names is difficult to enforce and unwise to rely on[citation needed].

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Philip Martin, The Writer's Guide to Fantasy Literature: From Dragon's Lair to Hero's Quest, p 134, ISBN 0-87116-195-8
  2. ^ Maria Tatar, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, p 260 W. W. Norton & company, London, New York, 2004 ISBN 0-393-05848-4
  3. ^ Maria Tatar, p 128, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, ISBN 0-393-05163-3
  4. ^ Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, v 1, p 95, Dover Publications, New York 1965
  5. ^ K. M. Briggs, The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature, p 115 University of Chicago Press, London, 1967
  6. ^ Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, v 1, p 91, Dover Publications, New York 1965
  7. ^ Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, v 1, p 95-6, Dover Publications, New York 1965
  8. ^ Maria Tatar, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, p 261 W. W. Norton & company, London, New York, 2004 ISBN 0-393-05848-4
  9. ^ The spell Trap the Soul is one such example, where knowledge of a true name allows for even those immune to magic to be captured.

[edit] Sources