Names of Power

you ever thought of changing your name irl

"I had for a time wondered about the possibility of this - only because of the claim out there that ones name (being referred to by it by others) was meant to have some sort of level of effect upon the person"

i mean sure

but

it has to be your true name

you know

not just the name you were given

more about names of power yo

i dunno about 'levels of success'

we hew our own paths

construct our own meaning

well some names are move useful for what you seek to achive than others

names of power

Well, the question is how would a person evaluate the level of effect of a given name upon them ?

before making the leapen

intuitively

i mean

for example

Andrew Dice Clay

who is an brash aggressive rude italian america

n

but was born Andrew Clay Silverstein

andrew dice clay was just a charcter he did

that slowly engulfed his life

like that commedian who plays chopper

but to a greater extent

how would you compare an company name to an magical name

I suppose they both tend to be representative of some idea. Grant Morrison has famously talked about stuff like the Golden Arches being comparable to sigils or whatever. I think the similarity differs depending on tradition and approach too. Some traditions have people choose magical names, some are chosen for them. Sometimes they're for purposes of identity concealment. Anonymity isn't really something a company would be going for, and they're unlikely to let someone from outside the entity choose their name either

Company names tend to be going for some amount memetic resilience and replicability (though not always. I'm sure Cambridge Analytica would have been happier if no-one ever heard of them)

Whereas I'm not sure that a magical name is intended to colonise people's mental space and be passed around in the same way

what about

wiccan names like silver ravenwolf

some names are move useful for what you seek to achive than others

That's almost in between the two I guess. It's obviously good for her marketing to have that as her nom-de-plume. Would Aleister Crowley have been as successful is he'd stuck to being called Edward Alexander Crowley?

E.A.

korealetting

Best Scooby-Doo reveal ever

thomas browne seemed to get by : p

otoh

there were plenty of ancient authors writing as zoroastor

The Crowley name change was very self-conscious marketing, whether or not it actually makes a difference is debatable, but the story goes that he read somewhere that people were more likely to be noteworthy if their names followed a "dum-da-da dum-da" meter, hence Aleister Crowley. He took the Aleister part from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Alastor

good plan

i think mouthfeel is important

Finally, someone is talking about the mouthfeel

what do you think of  William Sharp

who wrote "the pagan review" in 1890

as like 6 diffrent authors

and found success as Fiona Macleod

and none as william sharp

Again, echoes of Crowley. The Equinox is largely his writing, though you wouldn't know it if you looked at the list of authors

J K Rowling went by her initials because her publishers were concerned that she'd lose male readers if she called herself Joanne in the byline

yeah

i publish my writing under my initials

Is it possible that Fiona MacLeod's writing was better? Or do you think the name itself mattered?

having not read it

it's possible

i mean i think part of the potency of a name of power

is having the guts to claim it

but i don't think you can just claim a name of great power unearned

i knew a kid who thought he was king arthur

really didn't have what it takes to claim that name at all

tbf few do

to be realistic

few would

not as few as should

I'm a little wary of talking about this, but -redacted- springs to mind

-redacted- sounds simultaneously like a WWI soldier, a beer, and a car mechanic

And it encapsulates what he's trying to sell perfectly

-redacted- has none of that potency

i use -redacted- liberally

i like the ambiguity

A collective of one?

at this point

the opaqueness

wish i had a personal name as good

A few weeks ago I talked about my username (not -redacted- the other one.) Juxtaposition of the technologically advanced notion of a -readacted-  with the -redacted- fight against the alienation that -redacted- bring, plus a nod to Donna Haraway

My irl name is gender ambiguous. A couple of weeks ago I got invited to a women-in-tech meeting at my company because the person sending the email obviously made the wrong assumption when they came to my name in the employee roster.

unless you are blessed with a great name

i suspect

claiming a name is an important part of the pursuit of meaning

as a tool

if nothing else

but it's as much an act of reaching as an act of climbing