Yair asks "Is there a person who does not have a name?"
No. Everyone has a name. A given name is one of the only cultural characteristics that anthropologists agree is truly universal. At the dawn of the 20th century, reports were published of primitive human groups to the point of not having a name, but a deeper examination revealed that this was a mistake: the members of those tribes simply kept their names a secret from prying foreigners.
In Israel, like other countries, there is no legal option not to carry a name. The Names Law states that "those who do not have a surname or a first name, or whose names are unknown.. his parents shall choose for him.. a surname or a first name", and if they have not done so, Section 9 of the law authorizes the Minister of the Interior to give an official name to a person. The Minister of the Interior at the time of writing is Aryeh Makhlouf Deri. I was not able to find the names of his nine children (with the exception of Ben Yaakov, who serves as the head of the "Resource Mobilization Department" in the Zionist Organization) to allow the readers to assess whether to entrust the task to him. The law allows you to change the name your parents gave you (or the Minister of the Interior...) but not to give it up at all.
The paradox of Baker and the baker
But why is it actually obvious that every person needs a name and wants their own first name? According to neuroscientists, we all have a mechanism that allows us to create and remember proper names (of people and places). The existence of separate information processing mechanisms for nouns and proper names was illustrated in experiments in which it became clear that recalling a proper name is processed in different areas of the brain and that it takes a different time to process information related to a proper name compared to a word that designates other objects.
The medical literature documents cases in which brain-damaged people lost the ability to learn and remember proper names, while other functions of the nervous system were not affected. Thus, the first sign of deterioration in Alzheimer's patients is the damage to the memory of familiar names. The distinction that our mind makes between a proper name and just a word is illustrated in a phenomenon that has been named baker - Baker paradox.
According to this paradox, when the subject is shown a picture of a person and is told that his name is Baker (baker in English), he will forget this fact faster than if he is told that the man is a baker by profession. The first name behaves differently syntactically and logically: a name does not carry information or description. When we describe a person as "old" or "rich" we are grouping items of information that have a logical connection between them. When we talk about "Yossi", we only provide a reference that the brain needs to draw information from several categories of memory. Thus, information about the face cluster, the voice, as well as biographical and social information of various kinds should be collected under an arbitrary heading. It turns out that we are built for this special type of information processing. removal of the uncinate fasciculus A group of nerve fibers that connect different areas of the cerebral cortex leads to impairment of the ability to read the names of well-known characters and it seems that this pathway is important in connecting memories to the database of names that we store.
The uniqueness of the human name
The first name is an expression of private identity: as soon as a person is not just one of the crowd, he is identified by name. When we introduce ourselves or others in sentences such as "I am Moshe Cohen" or "Know me please - Yoram" we completely identify the name with the personality. Personal identity itself is not unique to man: plenty of creatures show the ability to know their fellows personally. For example, seagulls breeding in large nesting colonies know very well who their neighbors are. They will ignore chirps coming from the "correct" direction but will react aggressively to the sound of those birds when it is broadcast to them from an unexpected direction or when chirps of a foreign bird are heard from the familiar neighbor's direction.
In group animals, personal recognition of the members prevents wasteful power struggles: observations of fish have revealed that even they are able to take advantage of personal acquaintance with their friends and conclude who is winning in the confrontation. A fish known to be strong is someone you shouldn't mess with. Personal identity is important in order to establish a reputation in the pack, to create collaborations and alliances, to avoid incest and even to know if the person who utters a warning call is trustworthy or the type who repeatedly cries "wolf wolf" for nothing. A bit offensive to the appetite, but studies unequivocally prove that the hamburger we eat had friends who knew it personally as our friends know us: as individuals and not as part of the herd.
A "proper name" based on a smell, sight or sound is therefore very common among creatures living in density, from bats and seagulls to chimpanzees. But a human name is special in that it consists of a series of syllables and not of the nature of the sound: the name remains unchanged when the sound changes, when it is spoken by another person or when it is written. Songbirds are capable of a unique melody, but a real "name" that is learned by hearing and remains close to the individual for the rest of his life probably exists only with us and The animal with the most developed social intelligence - the dolphin. Dolphins will recognize the characteristic whistle of their friends even when it is played in a different voice and use it to identify themselves.
הA contract between the child and society
What sets us apart is not the personal identity that the name expresses but the cultural meaning we give it. Not only does each person have a name, but the giving of the name is always a significant ceremony and often of religious importance. At the beginning of the story "Glorification" by Nikolai Gogol, the story shifts to the baptism ceremony where the hero's name is determined. The randomness in the choice of the name foreshadows the random path of life ahead, the mother misses how many holy names are randomly pulled from the calendar, she decides "Well... that's his destiny, obviously. If so, he better read like his father. The father was Akaki, so will the son be Akaki..". The name is a kind of contract between the child and society, the child receives an identity and recognition of his self-worth and only then is he accepted as part of society. The mixing of personal and community identity in the first name is expressed in the naming ceremony in the short sentence "And his name shall be called in Israel..."
This is probably the source of the delay between birth and naming in many cultures. The traditions were shaped when the mortality of babies in their first days was high and when the child becomes a personality for everything through his first name, then his death is also the loss of a member of the community. A name change often occurs when a person feels that the unwritten contract between him and society has been violated and he expresses this disconnect through the name change: thus many blacks in the US changed their names to Muslim names in the 60s and Zionists transferred their names as an act of breaking away from Rabbinic Judaism and creating a "new Jew" ". Society is based on individuals with a personal identity and the human language that attaches identity to a name is the basis of society's authority to force a name on you.
Did an interesting, intriguing, strange, delusional or funny question occur to you? sent to ysorek@gmail.com
More of the topic in Hayadan:
3 תגובות
The 1st blessing God willing.
Nice ,
Just why does the writer feel the need to combine it with goat?
Sometimes it says "information" and sometimes it says information,
Does the writer not know that the meaning of "information"
is information in Hebrew,
Why add to an unnecessary goat?
exciting