Should we encourage students to write about character names?

Yes, No, and Why It Matters.

First of all, character names are indeed a METHOD (AO2) used to create meaning. Except when they're not.

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I think looking at character names gets right to the heart of the business of English and what we encourage students to do in the name of "analysis".

To think critically about names requires students to be sensitively aware -- but also to know when to stop.

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A good student -- and indeed their good teacher -- will sift character names for allusions and symbolic meanings.

Candy in OMAM has a name beginning with C and ending with Y, and a dodgy hand, suggesting he links thematically to Curley. Curley's Wife has no name...3/

suggesting she is defined by others.

The surname name SMITH denotes an "everyman" character -- Eva Smith in Inspector Calls, or Winston Smith in 1984.

But see how quickly students can run into trouble here: We can call Winston Smith an Everyman, but how much harder it is...4/

to pin down exactly what Orwell intended by invoking Winston Churchill? That would make for a lively discussion -- and maybe some bad ideas.

Some names suggest a meaning through their sound: Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit.

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Now -- any reader can get a sense of what Scrooge and Cratchit are like as characters from their names. But how would you encourage students to write about this in an exam?

You might say Scrooge sounds a bit like SCREW, GOUGE, SCROUNGE, SCOUR...maybe.

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His name certainly gives the impression of the "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner" that Dickens describes.

But could your students really pin it down in an exam, exactly how that effect is created?

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The word PHONOSTHEME means a sound or collection of sounds that suggest a certain meaning. For example, the sound GL at the start of a word occurs in many words related to light -- glow, glitter, glimmer, glint, glisten, gleam.

Is SC-- a phonostheme?

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SC occurs in words relating to struggle, labour and avarice: scrape, scour, scrounge, scanty? scupper? sq(?)ueeze, scoop? scullery?...it might be. It might be.

It's a very hard thing to pin down. We can tell how the name SOUNDS but actually explaining it is hard.

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Do you teach your students of ACC that Ebenezer is a Hebrew name? Do you teach them that some critics have taken Scrooge as an obviously Jewish, and in fact anti-Semitic character?

Because once you start down the path of names MEANING something, it's a slippery slope.

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The problem, I'd suggest, with writing about names is it can very quickly become an analytical cul-de-sac.

Which is to say, students can get into chatting all kinds of bollocks in the name of names.

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Severus Snape has a name meaning "strict" or "severe" in Latin: easy peasy. And SNAPE suggests snipe, sneer, snide.

But Dumbledore? According to Wikipedia... 12/

"Rowling stated she chose the name Dumbledore, which is a dialectal word for "bumblebee", because of [his] love of music: she imagined him walking around "humming to himself a lot"."

Erm...yeah. You can know what a name MEANS and that information can still TELL YOU NOTHING.

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Now we're into the CHATTING BOLLOCKS problem.

BBC Bitesize carries the following on Jekyll and Hyde, which apparently there are teachers delivering with straight faces to GCSE students...

Read it. Just read it.

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The problem with JEKYLL = JE KYLL is:

- it's incredibly tenuous
- Stevenson as a Scot would have pronounced it JEEKLE
- it's Hyde that does the killing not Jekyll
- seriously wtf

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Inspector Goole -- because he's like a ghost -- alright I'll give you that.

Eva Smith -- everywoman, yep
Daisy Renton -- because she rents herself out? maaaaybe

Sybil -- ironic because a Sybil was a Greek prophetess but Sybil Birling is ignorant? I'm 50/50 on this one.

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Arthur, Eric, Gerald, Sheila... no. Just no. Don't even.

(The more interesting thing about Arthur and Sybil is Arthur was the 13th most common boys' name in 1860 whereas Sybil wasn't in the top 200 for girls. Arthur would have been a commonish name; Sybil much more rarefied)
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And EVEN IF you know that Goole means ghost or Sybil means prophetess or Renton means rented...how much value is there in popping those facts into an exam? One tick apiece? It's really hard to develop those ideas.

Final point:

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We have to guard against a misconception in English that "analysis" means plucking arbtrary "hidden meanings" out of the air to prove that what the author wrote is some sort of symbolic code for something else. That isn't how it works.

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So students have to learn to think analytically about the text, but also critically about their own reading. They need to develop the sensitivity -- that sixth sense for when there's more going on -- to notice what might be there, but not go looking for what isn't.

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So talking critically about NAMES can provide, I think, a perfect microcosm for that discussion.

The best conversation I ever had about character names were the Man and Boy in The Road who have no names at all.

Happy New Year all.

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