Le Nom de personne

The truth of personal names

“…I have come to the conclusion that this kind of indissoluble association between person and name (and particularly given name, see Zonabend 1980) is not a specifically Brazilian thing but is an intrinsic part of a tradition of personal naming that is written into Portuguese‐speakers in such a historically sedimented fashion that the bearers of these notions are not even aware of them as norms or as formulated values.…”

“…6 6 For a plurality of examples, see the collection of papers edited by vom Bruck and Bodenhorn (2006). The classic studies by Alleton (1993) on Chinese naming, by Maybury‐Lewis (1974) and Lopes da Silva (1986) on Xavante naming, and by Zonabend (1980; 1984) on French naming remain, however, inspirations. …”

Des mouches et des hommes, dans un laboratoire japonais de génétique du comportement

“…C'est lors de ce premier round que sont découvertes des mutations aux allures encore de matricule : 241201, 268907, 261206, 230501 deviennent bientôt, respectivement, croaker, spinster, lingerer et fickle. L'opération qui consiste à pourvoir ces nouveaux objets d'un nom qui ne soit pas un numéro est important, tant il est vrai qu'il en va des drosophiles comme des hommes : les nommer et ainsi les individualiser est constitutif de leur identité aussi sûrement que décrire la manière dont ils se comportent [18] 7 . Toutefois, comme en attestent les épisodes suivants, cela ne suffit pas toujours à les faire venir à l'existence.…”

Personal Names

“…This commentary discusses personal names in relation to other technologies of belonging, highlighting the relevance of practices of naming for body politics, radical differences between the recent Western tradition of surnames and some other naming traditions and epistemologies, the formation of subjectivity in slavery through naming, and the cultural and political clashes that sometimes result when an expanding empire encounters and colonizes an indigenous tradition. Practices of naming, it is argued, are not only key elements of identification and personhood, embodied in the biosocial habitus much like other biomarkers, but they also situate people in genealogies, social networks, states, and empires (Zonabend 1980). Naming involves powerful speech acts, making history, constituting persons and the social relations and systems within which they are embedded—families, communities, states, and empires; indeed, naming is one of the key examples used in Austin’s (1962) classic formulation of speech acts.…”