Words are the source of all power. And names are more than just a collection of letters.
Names are still magic; even Sharon, Karen, Darren, and Warren are magic to somebody somewhere. In fairy stories, naming is knowledge. When I know your name, I can call your name, and when I call your name, you'll come to me.
I'm starting to believe in the power of a name. Because it can't be a mistake if I just call it 'change.'
Had the white settlers in North America called the natives 'Americans' instead of 'Indians', the early Americans could not have said that the 'only good Indian is a dead Indian' and could not have deprived them so easily of their lands and lands and lives. Robbing people of their proper names is often the first step in robbing them of their property, liberty, and life.
I start from something considered dead and arrive at a world. And when I put a title on it, it becomes even more alive.
Before you can kill a demon, you have to be able to say it's name. Names have power. While the word Alzheimer's terrorizes us, it has power over us. When we are prepared to discuss it aloud, we might have power over it. It's thought of as a mental illness and it is a physical illness, affecting the brain. There should be no shame in having it, yet people still don't talk about it
I begin with the renaming of the system. It used to be capitalism. But that evokes [Karl] Marx and [John] Rockefeller. So now we speak of the market system. That is a nice bland expression, which forgets those off-color references.
A name can't begin to encompass the sum of all her parts. But that's the magic of names, isn't it? That the complex, contradictory individuals we are can be called up complete and whole in another mind through the simple sorcery of a name.
There is a power in names. Olakunde told us of ashe-the power which runs through all things, subtle and flexible, which find its most potent expression in human utterance; so that it is a terrible thing to call down imprecations on an enemy, or to wish for anything but good, for what is said out loud is forged into truth.
Civilization consists in giving something an unfitting name, then dream about the result. And indeed the false name and the real dream create a new reality. The object really becomes another, because we turned it into another one. We manufacture realities.
This naming of things is so crucial to possession - a spiritual padlock with the key thrown irretrievably away - that it is a murder, an erasing, and it is not surprising that when people have felt themselves prey to it (conquest), among their first acts of liberation is to change their names.
We humans have had from time unknown the compulsion to name things and thus to be able to deal with them. The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it. And in ancient thought the name itself has power, so that to know someone's name is to have a certain power over him. And in some societies, as you know, there was a public name and a real or secret name, which would not be revealed to others.
Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name.
Dangerous thing, a name. Someone might catch hold of you by it, mightn't they?
Give a thing a name and it will somehow come to be.
When you name a beast, sometimes it makes it less bestial.
You must never call your enemy by a name you choose for him." “Instead you must call him by the name he calls himself. What he chooses will reflect his pride; it will reveal his desires. But what you choose to call him will reveal your fears, which should be kept to yourself, lest your enemy find the way to exploit them.
Names have a mysterious transforming power. Like a ring on a finger, a name may at first seem merely accidental, committing you to nothing; but before you realize its magical power, it's gotten under your skin, become part of you and your destiny.
The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it.
Don't name it, as they say, because instantly you offer it to this peculiar authority.
I think we all have the power to name ourselves. I try to call people what it is they wish to be called. But we can take the sting out of epithets and bad words by using them.
You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.
Women have had the power of naming stolen from us. We have not been free to use our own power to name ourselves, the world, or God.
In a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence.
