What's in a name?

How important is a name? If the name is the title of a book, or play, a song, a story, or even a non-fiction article, one would tend to think that it is pretty important. After all, the title is likely the first thing an audience will see about the story. In some cases, all the reader knows about the story is the name until they read it. You could argue that the name or title is the first piece of marketing.

Shakespeare had Juliet say, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” In other words, if instead of calling it a rose, you called it a skunkflower, it would still look and smell like a rose. The name does not change it. Did Shakespeare believe names were unimportant? Further, Shakespeare gave seemingly trivial names to three of his better comedies: Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like it, and What you Will. These names do not say anything about what the plays are about. They almost sound like he is saying, “these plays of mine are probably a waste of your time.”  (What You Will, is better known by its alternate title: Twelfth Night, though even that title doesn’t tell you anything about the play). I don’t think Shakespeare thought titles were unimportant. He penned some good evocative titles too. Perhaps he just did not feel those comedies were as important as some of his other works, or maybe he was just rushed to come up with a title. I have to say that all three of these sound to me like working titles; like he was going to replace them with something better, but somehow never got around to it.

When I am writing a story, sometimes I come up with the title first and it becomes the inspiration for the story. But more often I write the story and then have to come up with a title after it is finished or almost finished. Sometimes I will pick a line from the story that seems to sum it up. Other times it is just a word or phrase that captures the feeling. Sometimes I want a title to be poetic. Other times, keeping it simple seems best. As I mentioned last week, I have written a play for our local theater company for a Christmas show (yes it was accepted and will be performed along with several others in December). The play had been finished for several days, but all of a sudden I realized the deadline was upon me and I had to come up with a title like now. It is a Christmas play but no titles that sounded Christmassy seemed to fit. For a long time I toyed with the title: “Einstein’s Third Law of Elevators”. I liked that title, but it seemed a bit much, and it was about as far away from Christmas as you could get. But I needed something right now! “Elevator Time” popped into my brain. The cast spends time in an elevator . . .  meh. I wrote it on the form and sent it in. It seemed kind of generic and also not Christmassy, but at least it was short and to the point. Then, after I had submitted it, I got to thinking about it and realized that “Elevator Time” actually is a good title. It works on more than one level, which is a good thing for a title to achieve.

A good example of working on multiple levels is the song title “For Good” from the musical Wicked. The characters are saying that they have been changed ‘for good’, meaning changed permanently, but also meaning changed in a way to choose to be good. Also the characters who are singing it are friends saying goodbye ‘for good’. Such a simple title, just two words, yet brilliant.

What’s in a name? A whole world.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, or the other usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out soon).