Up, Running and Named

Tuesday August 15, 2006 at 11:23am mac, names, thinking too much Comments (1) »

Well, I've had my new Mac up and running for about a week now. It has now proven itself to be the best, fastest, prettiest, most efficient, most easy to use machine I have ever owned - all without a single major headache. The most 'fighting' with it I've had to do is resolve a permissions issue to get dvd's to play. This took all of about 5 minutes - 4.5 to figure out the problem, about 30 seconds to open Disk Utility and fix it.

It has been given the name Hikaru (Angelic Layer) - which roughly ranslates to 'to shine, glitter, be bright'. Ooooh. Shiny.

The ipod nano that I got with it has been given the name Sumomo (Chobits) - after a small, portable character.

The portable harddrive Kevin gave me full of stuff for the mac has been named The Pensieve (Harry Potter). Seemed appropriate.

The printer has not been named. I really don't see a need to, but this has got me thinking about names and naming things - specifically, inanimate things.

So I've got to thinking - what merits a proper name? Any inanimate facsimile of something that would ordinarily be named can (and should) be named - things like dolls and stuffed animals. But what about other things?

Now, I don't name things nearly so prolifically as some of my friends (like guitars, bookbags, cars, etc), but I do like to have something to call some of my stuff besides 'the computer', etc. I've found that I name anything that has some interactive qualities to it - hence the computer and the ipod easily merit names. The portable harddrive interacts with my computer, which insists that it have something to be called by.

This leaves (at least) one additional question: why name things? I think there are several reasons we name things. One is that its easier to call something by a name. One is that its more fun and allows us to be creative. I will submit, however, that a third reason is social. Naming an object ascribes some measure of projected personality to the object. By surrounding ourselves with objects that have names (and thus personalities) psychologically deepens the interaction between the object and the person.

Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

I'm sure I would think of my computer much differently If its name was Chaznar the Impailer. Of course, the computer would be exactly the same, but the way i perceive my interaction with it would change.

As always, there's a good chance i'm thinking too much about this.

~PS