What's in a Name?
Nearly everything has been named by someone. Book? Kid? Company? Country? At one point someone declared that we would all call it something. But have you ever noticed how restrictive we are in choosing how we name things? Sure, you can name something whatever you’d like, but for whatever reason we tend to name the same types of things in certain ways. Sure, you can name a boy child Henry or Silas or Aiden or George, or even go “extreme” and name him Phineas or Absalom or Arrow or Ranger. But in the end, don’t all those names seem pretty similar? Each are single words, two or three syllables, and around 5-7 letters. Why doesn’t anyone think to name a kid “C3P0” or “The Doors” or “High the Sunshine” (well, ok, some people aren’t afraid to do something like that.) Boys are named a certain way. Girls are named a certain way. Bands are named a certain way. Medicine is named a certain way. You get my drift. Humans are conformers. If a category’s names follow a pattern or a vibe, then we’re usually going to follow right along with that. Anyways, I’ve listed the “top 10” of a handful of categories below to illustrate the point. These entries were taken from easily-found “top 10” lists. The next time you’re naming something, I challenge you to category-jump. The world could use more medicines named Metallica and kids named Folklore.
Books
Don Quixote A Tale of Two Cities The Lord of the Rings The Little Prince Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone And Then There Were None The Dream of the Red Chamber The Hobbit She: A History of Adventure The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe A bit heavey on “The”, “And”, and “Of” , but solid group!
Bands
The Beatles Eagles Led Zeppelin AC/DC Pink Floyd Aerosmith The Rolling Stones Metallica Van Halen Fleetwood Mac Quality. I’ve always loved band names.
Boys
Liam Noah Oliver William Elijah James Benjamin Lucas Mason Ethan
Girls
Olivia Emma Ava Sophia Isabella Charlotte Amelia Mia Harper Evelyn 7 of them end in “a”!
Board Games
Gloomhaven Pandemic Legacy Brass Terraforming Mars Twilight Imperium Gaia Project Through the Ages Spirit Island Great Western Trail Scythe
Companies
Apple Microsoft Alphabet Saudi Aramco Amazon Facebook Tesla Berkshire Hathaway Tencent JP Morgan Chase
Countries
China India United States Indonesia Pakistan Nigeria Brazil Bangladesh Russia Mexico
Movies
Titanic ET The Wizard of Oz Star Wars The Lord of the Rings Snow White Terminator The Lion King The Godfather The Jesus Film
2020 Albums
Folklore Fine Line Map of the Soul After Hours When we Fall Asleep, Where do we go? Frozen II What You See is What You Get Chromatica Lover Legends Never Die
Medicine
Levothyroxine Lisinopril Atorvastatin Metformin Amlodipine Metoprolol Omeprazole Simvastatin Losartan Albuterol Nonsense, the lot of it. It’s like scientists are trying to one-up each other on how crazy they can make their brand new drug sound.
