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Narrating names
Folklore, April, 2002 by W.F.H. Nicolaisen
Even more important, however, is the semantic distinction between names and words. Put in a nutshell, words must have lexical meaning if they are to be used competently; names can be quite meaningless lexically but can still function perfectly well as long as they have onymic contents; even when lexical meaning is still transparent as in, let us say, surnames like Smith or Brown, that meaning does not interfere with their function as names, for somebody called Smith can be a baker or somebody called Brown can have a contradictory skin or hair colour. In addition to meaningless or inappropriate inherited surnames, many of us have been identified all our lives by first names which for us and others are semantically opaque. Similarly, the vast majority of people in this country live in locations that have had for some considerable time meaningless names but the onymic contents of which has made them perfectly functionable as names. It is this characteristic which has turned place names into such important evidence in the establishment of relative linguistic stratifications, as they can survive the languages which coined them by phonological adaptations in later languages. We are therefore fully justified in treating names quite differently from words and follow with special attention their usage in the various contexts in which they occur.
This is not to say that all the qualities mentioned so far as factors in the differentiation of names from words are relevant when it comes to their investigation in folk-cultural environments, but in the following we will look at some instances in which that distinction does undoubtedly matter.
In spite of the proven functionality of lexically meaningless names, users of names are not necessarily comfortable with mere onymic contents, and therefore often try to restore meaning to meaningless names through secondary reinterpretation. The Scottish island name Skye--as in "over the sea to"--existed for many centuries before any Gaelic speakers ever set foot on it; yet it is invariably interpreted as either "the winged isle" or as referring to the cleft nature of its coastline, since there are two Gaelic words sgith, one meaning "wing" and the other "knife." Both these interpretations are linguistic anachronisms, and we have to be satisfied with acknowledging that we know neither the lexical meaning of the island name nor the language which coined it.
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