Themes

The Politics of Names / Naming

How can names work not only to uphold inequality, but also to challenge it?

As sociologist Ruha Benjamin reminds us, names are political, and naming is an inescapably political act. Contributors to this theme examine how names serve as an object of focus, a motivation, a barrier to social justice struggles, and more.

Tell Me About Your Name: In Dialogue with Ayomide Badmus

Ayomide Badmus: I decided to create this project because of my experiences and relationship with my name. When I moved to the United States, I discovered myself existing within spaces as a minority, for the first time, and that feeling was heightened by having a non-western name. I always felt like I couldn’t escape from being “othered,” so for most of my time in the U.S., I went by a different name, something more western and ambiguous. Many immigrants report having intricate relationships with their names after relocating to the U.S., and I wanted to further explore such relationships through this project. I decided to not appear in the video and share my own experiences, partly as a stylistic choice, but also because I wanted the focus to be on the interviewees and their experiences.

Andrew Crane: This article explores processes of renaming buildings. It looks specifically at buildings as a technology with various relationships to language, race, and the state. The article begins by demonstrating that universities are not inherently progressive institutions: they are wounded and wounding places, a fact that becomes visible when we analyze how places names around campus “constitute a hidden, power laden curriculum.” Additionally, the article highlights that naming is a political technology. This is because “racism is a spatial system as well as a social one”; as such, “place naming can give physical form and permanence to white power.” Finally, the article discusses how to begin healing these wounds through actions in the classroom. The ideas in this article are not often articulated within mainstream media, so I think they stand to fill a gap in thinking about relationships between violence, language, space, race in our immediate campus surroundings.

 

Ayomide Badmus: This article explores 13 individuals’ experiences with their names and name-change journey. All of the people featured discuss a gendered and racialized disconnect with their names as part of their experiences of queerness. Names are incredibly gendered in many cultures, especially in the Western world. This brings to mind two concepts about the ways that names function as technologies. Firstly, the idea of gendered names as a colonial construct. For instance, in many African languages, names’ meanings are a full sentence. My name means “my joy has come,” and this naming pattern allows names to remain ungendered in my culture. This has impacted my journey as a non-binary person because I’ve never felt a disconnect with my name since there isn’t a specific gendered idea associated with it. Secondly, the difficulty attached to legal / technical name change processes. How can we think about the state’s use of names as a way to regulate the lives of governed individuals while also upholding heteronormative, patriarchal standards?

Naming is Political

“Naming a child is serious business. And if you are not White in the United States, there is much more to it than personal preference. When my younger son was born I wanted to give him an Arabic name to reflect part of our family heritage. But it was not long after 9/11, so of course I hesitated. I already knew he would be profiled as a Black youth and adult, so, like most Black mothers, I had already started mentally sparring those who would try to harm my child, even before he was born…[K]eep in mind that names are racially coded. While they are one of the everyday tools we use to express individuality and connections, they are also markers interacting with numerous technologies, like airport screening systems and police risk assessments, as forms of data.”

Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity 2019, p. 1.