You have but to know an object...

You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.

~Elias Canetti~

Words have meaning and names h...

Words have meaning and names have power.

~Author Unknown~

Women have had the power of na...

Women have had the power of naming stolen from us.

~Mary Daly~

Why, can you imagine what woul...

Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless.

~Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth~

What's in a name? That which w...

What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.

~William Shakespeare~

What's in a name? That which ...

What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet

~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet~

We don't know when our name ca...

We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.

~Milan Kundera~

To name oneself is the first a...

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual. Immigration officials did this to refugees; husbands routinely do it to wives.

~Erica Mann Jong~

Tigers die and leave their ski...

Tigers die and leave their skins; people die and leave their names.

~Japanese Proverb~

The name of a man is a numbing...

The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.

~Marshall McLuhan~

Sticks and stones will break m...

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.

~English proverb~

Proper names are poetry in the...

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

~Wystan Hugh Auden ~

People's fates are simplified ...

People's fates are simplified by their names.

~Elias Canetti~

Our names are labels, plainly ...

Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.

~Logan Pearsall Smith~

Of all eloquence a nickname is...

Of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of all arguments the most unanswerable.

~William Hazlitt~

Names, once they are in common...

Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

~Salman Rushdie~

Names are an important key to ...

Names are an important key to what a society values.  Anthropologists recognize naming as 'one of the chief methods for imposing order on perception.'

~David S. Slawson~

Name is a fence and within it ...

Name is a fence and within it you are nameless.

~Samuli Paronen~

He left the name at which the ...

He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

~Samuel Johnson~

Good men must die, but death c...

Good men must die, but death cannot kill their names..

~Proverb~