Abby Falck

aefalck2@illinois.edu

LIS 404 Final Paper

5/6/15

The Significance of Personal Names in Young Adult Literature

“What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name

that we are told is ours.” ― James Joyce, Ulysses

Introduction

Many cultures and religions imbue names and naming with deep

significance—we have an almost instinctual sense of names as

important. Indeed, the power of language is its ability to

communicate an idea by naming it; nouns, verbs, and adjectives

are all generalized names we’ve given to objects, actions, and

descriptors. Proper nouns are an extension of this, names that

identify a specific person, place or thing.

Because personal names identify specific individuals, they are

inextricably linked to identity, and because young adults are in

the process of discovering or defining their identities, they are

more likely than older adults to play with names. (Nilsen, 2007)

It’s not uncommon for teenagers in high school to stop using the

nickname they’ve grown up with and start using their full name or

a different variation on their name to signify that they are no

longer a child. I knew a Beth who decided to go by Liz and a Char

who decided to use her full name, Charlyn. This practice is

formalized in certain cultures, such as some Native American

tribes that traditionally give young people a new name after an

event that marks their entry into adulthood. (Hirschfelder and

Molin 1999)

Literature has a long tradition of the meaningful and symbolic

use of names, and literary analysis of authors such as Ernest

Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, or Charlotte Brontë would be

incomplete without a discussion of how and why they chose certain

characters’ names and what they meant by it.

Yet despite the general significance of personal names, their

particular importance to young adults, and their potential

implications in literature, there is very little discussion of

the significance of names in young adult literature, which has

not been subjected to the same sort of analysis that high-brow

adult literature has. The notable exception is Aileen and Don

Nilsen’s Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature. In this paper, I

will further explore the development and use of personal

character names using the following books as examples: A Wizard of

Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The

House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, and The Absolutely True Diary of a

Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

The Significance of Personal Names

Western culture, informed by the Abrahamic religions, used to

place a great deal of significance on the symbolic importance of

naming an infant. Although contemporary children are usually

named immediately after birth, it used to be much more common to

wait until a naming ceremony could be performed. In traditional

Islam, a child may be named on the day of its birth, but it’s

preferable to wait until the seventh day, when a sacrificial

ceremony is performed; in Judaism, boys are traditionally named

on the eighth day, as part of their bris (circumcision ceremony),

while girls are named the next time the family attends their

synagogue, when a blessing is performed. In describing the

Catholic rite of baptism, The Catechism of the Council of Trent states,

“Finally, a name is given, which should be taken from some

person, whose eminent sanctity has given him a place in the

catalogue of the Saints: this similarity of name will stimulate

to the imitation of his virtues and the attainment of his

holiness; and we should hope and pray that he who is the model of

our imitation, may also, by his advocacy, become the guardian of

our safety and salvation." (Donovan 1905, 136) In fact, all three

Abrahamic religions emphasize the importance of choosing a name

from within the religion, either from a relative or admirable

person; names of non-believers or notorious persons are to be

avoided, lest the powerful connection between name and being

cause the child to emulate undesirable qualities.

Many Native American cultures have similar practices of

choosing children’s names based on people they hope their

children will emulate; however, children do not always carry the

name into adulthood. Most tribes mark a young person’s transition

into adulthood with a ceremony during which they are given a new

name, often one that is descriptive of a personal trait or

accomplishment. Toni Morrison notes a similar convention in

African-American culture: “In the beginning of black people being

in this country, they lost their names. They were given names by

their masters and so they didn't have names and they began to

call one another, decades later, by nicknames. I don't think I

knew any of my father's friends, male friends, by their real

name. I remember them only by their nicknames.” (Morrison 2015)

By renaming adults, names in these cultures become descriptive

rather than prescriptive.

Today, young adults have more flexibility than ever in

experimenting with different names and identities. Friends and

family may only humor one or two requests to use a new moniker,

but there are any number of online communities where a young

person can choose a screenname and see if it fits—or try out a

new personality to go with it.

Even without in-depth analysis, names carry a wealth of

information. Last names indicate ethnicity, race, and (possibly)

marital status. Names can indicate family ties and traditions,

especially when they end with Jr., III, etc. Nicknames can be

used for humorous effect, like the irony of “Little John;” to

describe a person; or to ostracize them, as in “Fat Angie” from

e. E. Charlton’s book of the same name. Given names often suggest

the values of a person’s parents—we can assume that Faith’s

parents were religious, or that Rainbow’s parents were hippies.

Similarly, names like Aaron, Mohammed, or Maria indicate the

religion into which their bearer was born. Names are also marked

by class—in Amir Abram’s The Girl of His Dreams, the character

Quandaleesha is mocked because her name is “a ghetto joke.”

(Abrams 2013, 44) Real life names can be as literary as book

characters—it was an easy guess that my friend Flannery’s parents

were happy with her decision to pursue librarianship, and in high

school, Hart Moss was tired of hearing about playwright Moss Hart

from every English teacher he encountered. Sometimes, names can

even indicate a lack of parental insight, as when my grandparents

—both lifelong teetotalers—named my father Dennis, a name derived

from Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.

Some Ways in Which Authors Determine Characters’ Names

There seem to be two camps regarding when authors settle on a

name or names for their main character(s). Some, like Sandra

Cisneros and Mindy McGinnis, leave them unnamed until their story

is complete or nearly complete, a technique I’ll call post-

naming. “Who they are is what's important, not what I'll call

them,” writes McGinnis. Although she sounds dismissive, McGinnis

and other post-naming authors are deeply concerned with the

appropriateness of their characters’ names. When they begin, the

characters and plot are rough ideas, not entirely pre-determined;

they are written intuitively, relying on artistic inspiration,

and the authors don’t want to choose a name that may not fit the

finished character or may exert undue influence over how the

character develops. Once the characters and their story have been

fully fleshed out, a suitable name can be found. Because these

authors are drawing from the creative impulse, names often arrive

in flashes of insight. McGinnis describes this experience as

asking the character what her name is and receiving an answer

from the fictional person. Cisneros related a similar process

when I asked her about character names in The House on Mango Street.

The protagonist-narrator is named Esperanza, which is Spanish for

“hope.” Cisneros had no name for her until the book was nearly

complete. “I waited ‘til it came to me, you know, I just waited,

and then I just realized she’s really about hope and direction

and growing. That name may have come to me from somebody, you

know, my… antennae are out when I’m looking [for a name].”

Not all post-naming is so intuitive. Some authors develop

their ideas in depth before putting they start writing,

particularly those such as J. K. Rowling and Joseph Heller whose

books encompass a large cast of characters and several

simultaneous plotlines, requiring detailed notes to maintain

continuity. (Temple 2013) Although they have the name ready

before they start to write the story proper, they are effectively

post-naming by detailing the characters and their fate before

they choose a name. The amount of planning that these authors

engage in, and particularly the wordplay that Rowling and Heller

employ in naming their characters, suggests that the names they

choose are the result of deliberate decisions rather than

momentary inspiration.

In opposition to post-naming are, naturally, authors who pre-

name their characters. Orson Scott Card writes that names are one

of his “earliest decisions… A name is part of who a person is.

It’s the label that stands for everything you’ve done and

everything that you are.” (Card 2010, 54) Like authors who post-

name, Card considers personal names highly important to his work,

but to him and other pre-naming authors, names are so tightly

bound to identity that the two cannot be separated. Ursula K. Le

Guin indicates she pre-names as well, finding the right names to

help her imagine her characters. She writes eloquently about her

intuitive method of writing. “For me, as for the wizards, to know

the name of an island or a character is to know the island or the

person. Usually the name comes of itself, but sometimes one must

be very careful: as I was with the protagonist, whose true name

is Ged. I worked (in collaboration with a wizard named Ogion) for

a long time trying to ‘listen for’ his name, and making certain

it really was his name. This all sounds very mystical and indeed

there are aspects of it I do not understand but it is a pragmatic

business too, since if the name had been wrong the character

would have been wrong—misbegotten, misunderstood.” (Le Guin 1979,

52) For Le Guin, naming is an integral part of character

creation, and developing the right character for her story

depends on choosing the correct name.

Indeed, one interesting aspect of pre-naming is its potential

to affect how characters develop. In Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s

Game, the protagonist endures torturous training at the hands of

his mentor, Mazer Rackham. Although Card chose the name Rackham

as a tribute to illustrator Arthur Rackham and with no other

meaning or purpose in mind, he later admitted that, “it’s quite

possible that Mazer Rackham behaved as he did—tormenting Ender as

part of his training—precisely because I was making the

unconscious association of the Rack in Rackham with the tortures

of the inquisition. In other words, it’s possible that the name

influenced the story, rather than the other way around.” (Nilsen

and Nilsen 2007, 98)

Subtextual meaning in names is most easily delivered in direct

references, as when Esperanza personifies her story’s theme of

hope, but many authors also recognize and consider how the pure

sound of a name affects its connotation. In The Chocolate War,

author Robert Cormier "chose harsh, hard sounds for the names of

villains like Archie and softer sounds for the name of someone

like Jerry." (Nilsen and Nilsen 2007, 30) In between direct

reference and pure sound are names whose sound generates

meaningful associations, such as Rackham with a torture rack.

Even made-up names can inspire indirect references. Le Guin’s

naming is often based simply on finding the right sound, but she

also relies on her subconscious to create meaningful names, as

when she read a sign for Salem, Oregon backwards and combined it

with an idea she’d read previously to create a story about a

place called Omelas, where the happiness of all citizen relies on

keeping a single child in misery and solitude, and a few

conscientious citizens choose to leave when they discover the

cause of their well-being.

“It would take a rare reader to make the associations that

Le Guin has shown the name has for her. Salem means 'peace'

though in Salem, Massachusetts, they burnt women for

witchcraft. It is cognate with Arabic salaam, a greeting,

though in the story the brave characters bid farewell to

their Omelas, which is Salem O. reversed, a town whose peace

is based on the oppression of one person and which therefore

is rejected by those with conscience. Melas is Greek for

'black'—the dark shade hidden beneath the brightness of

Omelas. Omelas is homophonous with homme hélas 'man, alas!'

It takes a considerable ingenuity, perhaps even for Le Guin,

to arrive at such interpretations of the name. It is likely

that she began with the sound and only later realized its

semantic potential.” (Algeo 1982, 66)

We should also be mindful of the fact that, in some cases, a

name’s significance serves the author more than the reader.

Authors Sandra Cisneros and Cece Bell have each written fictional

memoirs that hew closely to their childhood memories, and both

authors have incorporated some real names of people they knew—

friends and family—while changing others either for artistic

purposes or out of concern for others’ privacy and feelings.

Using some real names is an easy way to ensure that those

characters have the “right” name, but most readers won’t be aware

of their primary significance, which is in the bond they help

create between the author and their work. Using their real names

allows the author’s memory to flow more freely and may help cue

additional memories, details, or emotions that inform the

writing. Sometimes, a name has a specific meaning to the author

that is not accessible to the reader.

With all the factors that affect a name’s connotations—direct

reference, association, and pure sound—those of us who seek to

uncover hidden meaning and authorial intent must be humble in our

assumptions; we may investigate too deeply or attribute allusions

that the author intend. In naming the enemy aliens of Ender’s Game

“buggers,” Card only meant to help the reader imagine insectoid

aliens and perhaps reference the phrase “little buggers,” but

some readers—perhaps familiar with Card’s anti-gay politics—

interpreted it as a homophobic reference to the British term

“bugger,” derogatory slang for a homosexual person. (Nilsen and

Nilsen 2007, 97) Card says he wasn’t aware of the British slang

meaning, but given the role that subconscious associations play

in creating meaning in names, it may be possible that Card had

heard the term before but didn’t remember it until he was

reminded by upset readers. Looking for and finding meaning in

character names can be an enjoyable intellectual exercise and

provide additional depth to a work of literature, but we should

be cautious not to become overly attached to any single

interpretation.

How Authors Cue Readers to the Importance of Names

Even if every name carries meaning in and of itself, only some

authors use names symbolically or referentially. Looking for

deeper meanings among names where there are none is distracting

and frustrating, but fortunately, authors—like poker players—have

tells. Whether they intend to or not, authors who are themselves

concerned with the meanings of names usually express it in their

writing. They cue the reader to look for deeper meaning by

creating characters who attach importance to names or by having

one or more names whose symbolism is obvious. As I explore how

each book uses personal names, I will also demonstrate that each

author has cued the reader to pay attention to that aspect of the

story.

Examples of Name Symbolism and Hidden Meanings in YA Literature

A Wizard of Earthsea

In A Wizard of Earthsea, a young and talented wizard named Ged acts

impetuously to defend his braggadocio and releases a monstrous

shadow, which he must first flee from and later pursue in order

to correct his mistake and restore balance to the world.

Just as Le Guin’s names her characters as she creates them, so

too the magic in Earthsea lies in True Names that were created at

the same time as the things they reference, inextricable aspects

of their being, and thus the True Name of something does not just

refer to it, but is that thing. The idea of a powerful True Name

is an ancient one and probably originates with language itself,

which gave humans tremendous power to communicate ideas and

information by naming both the physical world and abstract

thoughts and emotions. A theology very similar to the magic of

Earthsea can be found among Native American tribes, who—despite of

course variations that differed from one cultural group to

another—universally held that personal names were powerful and

valuable. For example, the Delaware of the Northeast “had a

private, sacred name known only to the person, the family, and

the Creator,” and the Navajo of the Southwest “gave people ‘holy’

or ‘war’ names that are part of one's personal power,” which were

used sparingly lest the power be diminished. (Hischfelder and

Molin, 1999) Just as Ged receives his True Name from the wizard

Ogion as a rite of passage into adulthood, receiving one’s True

Name in Native American traditions was an important event that

usually occurred as part of a ceremony marking the transition

from childhood to adulthood.

It’s ironic that the book which provides the strongest cue to

look for deeper meaning in names, in fact has none. Ged’s

nickname is Sparrowhawk, after the birds he used to call to him

as an adolescent, and like them, he will fly far from home in

pursuit of his prey, but this is the only instance of name-

symbolism in the book. A Wizard of Earthsea centers on the power of

names, yet the meaning of every name except “Sparrowhawk” is

derived solely from their sound, with the exception of three

islands which Le Guin named for her children’s baby-names

(although she’s never revealed which three). “None of the other

names ‘means’ anything that I know of, though their sound is more

or less meaningful to me.” (Le Guin 1979, 51) She disavows any

allusions and vehemently rejects an interpretation of “Ged” as a

reference to “God.” Algeo ties this to Le Guin’s expressions of

Zen Buddhist theology in the book, relating the following Zen

saying: “Before I studied Zen, mountains were mountains and

rivers were rivers. While I was studying, Zen, mountains came to

mean far more than just mountains and rivers far more than just

rivers. When I had completed my study of Zen, mountains were

mountains and rivers were rivers.” Instead of using names for

their expansive ability to generate associations in the reader’s

mind, the power of names in Earthsea is that they have a single

reference point, which they call upon with such clarity that the

name is inextricable from the thing it names. “Ged” is simply Ged

and nothing else, but “Ged” is so purely Ged that the name is the

same as the person.

Ender’s Game

Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, is a work of science-fiction

futurism in which humanity’s priority is to defend itself against

insectoid aliens colloquially known as buggers. Toward that end,

six-year-old genius Ender is sent to an off-world Battle School,

where his abilities are honed by subjecting him to a series of

psychological tortures. The ill-treatment pays off for humanity

when Ender defeats the buggers once and for all, although Ender

himself is broken when he realizes that he’s been tricked into

committing genocide. While the book primarily follows Ender, we

also see glimpses of older sister and brother, Valentine and

Peter, who use their considerable intellectual abilities to

affect world politics and, eventually, control world governance.

Card provides ample cues for readers to seek symbolic or

associative meaning in the names of his characters. On page 15,

Colonel Graff has arrived to tell Ender’s parents that he wants

Ender to enroll in Battle School.

“Must you call him that stupid nickname?” Mother began to

cry.

“That’s the name he calls himself.”

We never find out how Andrew Wiggin got the nickname Ender, but

his mother’s strong emotional reaction followed by the Colonel’s

use of it to emphasize Ender’s self-determination indicates that

there is more to the name than its surface appearance, and on

page 31, the author gives away the symbolism of Ender’s name when

another student in Battle School meets him and remarks, “Not a

bad name here. Ender. Finisher. Hey.” Valentine’s name is also

obviously symbolic, and throughout the book, characters give each

other playful or mean nicknames that are descriptive in some way,

while Valentine and Peter adopt the screennames Demosthenes and

Locke for their online personas, after other great political

thinkers. Finally, near the end of the book, Ender’s mentor Mazer

Rackham introduces him to the weapon he will use against the

buggers, nicknamed the Doctor Device because its official name is

the Molecular Detachment Device. Ender doesn’t understand the

humorous wordplay that leads from “Molecular Detachment” to

“M.D.” to “Doctor,” but we as readers do, and if we haven’t been

looking for wordplay in the names of other characters, this our

last and clearest indication to do so.

As mentioned above, Valentine is one of the most obviously

symbolic names in Ender’s Game. Her name is unusual and readers

cannot help thinking of Valentine’s Day, which is appropriate

since Valentine is the most caring and nurturing person in the

book. It’s also possible that Card is playing on his own first

name and creating an allusion to the legend of Valentin and

Orson. In this medieval French folktale, the titular characters

are twin brothers separated at birth. Orson is raised in court

and becomes a knight, while Valentin is a wild man of the forest.

As adults, they encounter and recognize each other, and Valentin

brings Orson to court to civilize and educate him. In the book,

Valentine has a similar civilizing effect on her brothers, but

there aren’t enough similarities to say with any certainty

whether Card intended to make this reference.

There is not much more to be said about the symbolism of

Ender’s name beyond the quote above; he will indeed end the

conflict between the buggers and human, albeit by ending the

bugger race and civilization itself. The symbolism of Ender’s

given name, Andrew is also fairly simple: Andrew was one of

Jesus’ apostles and brother to Simon Peter, now known as Saint

Peter, said to be the first pope of the Catholic Church. In

Ender’s Game, Peter unifies and leads a world government. We see

very little of Peter and there’s no clear indication of how the

government functions or is organized, but the allusion to Saint

Peter makes us think of the way the Catholic Church expanded its

political—as well as religious—influence over Europe.

I have already discussed how the word “rack” in “Rackham” may

have influenced the character of Mazer Rackham. Mazer, according

to Card, was derived from Karl G. Maeser, the first president of

Brigham Young University, where Card worked when he was writing

Ender’s Game. (Nilsen and Nilsen 2007, 97) But the sound and

spelling of the name evokes “one who amazes” —Rackham won battles

against the odds, “destroying an enemy fleet twice his size and

twice his firepower, using the little human ships that seemed so

frail and weak” to save Earth from the bugger invasion. (Card

2010, 18) The name also references mazes, a type of puzzle—

unwittingly, Mazer Rackham solved the puzzle of how to defeat the

buggers. Finally, the names Ender Wiggins and Mazer Rackham

mirror each other—English surnames and first names of two

syllables that end in “er” and evoke the character’s greatest

deed—foreshadowing that Ender will eventually join Rackham as a

legendary military hero.

The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros’ acclaimed novel The House on Mango Street is only

somewhat fictional, drawing heavily from the author’s real

memories and experiences of growing up in a working-class

Hispanic neighborhood of Chicago. As previously mentioned, the

names of the protagonist’s closest friends were taken directly

from Cisneros’ childhood friends, while other names were made up.

The author cues readers to the significance of names,

especially Esperanza’s, in the fourth chapter, titled My Name.

Here, Esperanza meditates on her name and her mixed feelings

about it. She equates the English meaning of her name, “hope,”

with “sadness… waiting.” (Cisneros 2009, 10) Hope is people do

when they want things to be better but are powerless to make the

improvements themselves. Esperanza was also the name of her

great-grandmother, who was an independent woman and refused to

marry until she was kidnapped and forced to marry Esperanza’s

great-grandfather. Esperanza admires her great-grandmother’s

strength but doesn’t want to inherit her sad fate. “I would like

to baptize myself under a new name,” she concludes, “A name more

like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or

Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.”

(Cisneros 2009, 11)

Esperanza is seeking her own True Name and expressing an

adolescent’s desire to define her own identity and independence.

In a presentation in Chicago on April 16, 2015 at the Museum of

Mexican Art, Cisneros revealed that the X in “Zeze the X” was a

tribute to Malcolm X, who rejected his surname as being a product

of slavery and renamed himself. Through Esperanza, she said,

Cisneros was expressing her anger at patrilineal naming

conventions that symbolically break the links between mothers and

daughters.

Zeze the X is an appropriate choice for other reasons as well.

It keeps and emphasizes the uncommon “z” in Esperanza,

maintaining some connection to the family tradition, but it

sounds exotic and mysterious. The mysterious element is

emphasized by X, which commonly represents the unknown,

suggesting that Esperanza herself is unsure of her own identity

and who she will become as she matures.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Like The House on Mango Street, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True

Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a slightly fictionalized memoir of a

young person dissatisfied with the place they’re growing up.

Arnold “Junior” Spirit lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation

(“the rez”) in Wellpinit, a community beset by poverty and

alcoholism. Seeking a better education and a better life, he

starts attending an off-reservation high school, where he is the

only non-White student. While he struggles to make friends at his

new school, he is roundly rejected by his community of birth, as

entering the White world is perceived as a betrayal.

One of the first characters we meet is Junior’s, best friend,

aptly called Rowdy because he’s always getting into fights. Not

much later, seeing his mother’s name in his school textbook

enrages Junior so much that he throws it across the room, setting

the book’s main events in motion. The use of a descriptive

nickname followed by a scene in which a name plays a pivotal role

suggests that readers should look for other names that may be

descriptive or pivotal to the characters, and indeed there are

several.

We don’t learn Junior’s name until page 44 of the book, and we

don’t learn his given name—Arnold Spirit—until page 60. This

device calls attention to the name because it’s been withheld for

so long. Arnold recalls Benedict Arnold and reflects the view of

many in his community that he turned traitor. The unusual surname

Spirit connects him to his Native American ancestry and also

references the fact that Junior has a lot of spirit in the sense

of courage, fortitude, and optimism, which he needs to fight

against the all the factors that conspire to keep him from

escaping the rez. Junior is the name by which Arnold is usually

known and is the most meaningful. It’s a common Indian name,

we’re told, and as such reflects his ties to family, heritage,

and thus the rez; these ties both support him and entrap him.

Junior’s older sister is named Mary Runs Away, and indeed, her

most notable trait is her tendency to run away—first from the

outside world to live in her parents’ basement, then more

literally by eloping and moving to Montana. Junior also finds out

that she’s been mentally “running away” from the depression of

rez life since high school by reading and writing romance

fiction.

In addition to providing authenticity to the setting, Alexie’s

use of nicknames, particularly Mary Runs Away, references Indian

naming practices. The Spokane tribe are part of the Interior

Salish language and cultural group. Traditionally, infants in

this culture were given a family name shortly after birth, but—as

in most other Native American cultures—people were commonly known

by a descriptive nickname. As mentioned previously, people’s

given names were rarely used because of their powerful nature,

and as a result, there is less distinction between nicknames and

given names in these cultures than there is in European-derived

U.S. culture. Cross-cultural confusion, the descriptive nature of

Indian nicknames, and their frequently humorous or teasing

nature, has resulted in Native American names being

misunderstood, appropriated, and mocked by mainstream U. S.

culture. The nicknames in Absolutely True Diary are one way in which

Alexie corrects and reclaims his cultural heritage.

Notably, only Rowdy and Junior are known primarily by their

nicknames; Mary Runs Away is usually called Mary, and no other

character is given an Indian nickname—other significant Native

American characters include Junior’s mother Agnes, his father

Arnold Sr., and Eugene. The use of common, familiar names for

these characters de-exoticizes them and teaches young non-Native

readers that contemporary Indian culture is not what they’ve

learned about from popular culture or when studying Native

American history in school.

Conclusion

For all that we can glean from real people’s names,

fictional character’s names are weightier still because they are

an integral aspect of an author’s world-building, and authors

have nothing but words to work with. The flexibility of names

provides an opportunity to set the tone of a book—a realistic

name with no obvious symbolism prepares the reader for a work of

realistic fiction; a fabricated name places the book in a fantasy

or science-fiction setting; silly or punning names establish a

book as comedic. Names taken from famous literary, religious, or

historical figures give authors a shortcut to establishing their

characters by taking advantage of readers’ preexisting

associations and can add depth of meaning by foreshadowing the

character’s fate. In a memoir like The House on Mango Street, names

can establish the reality of the setting and events and help

anchor the author in their story. Even without a direct

reference, authors often use the sound of a name to create

associative meaning, and occasionally the meaning of a name is

nothing but its sound, a name meaning nothing but itself.

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