Name as a possessive

[Darby]

I once heard someone say that having a name caused you to be in part owned by that name, when people use it, they command your attention and possess your attention for however long, but ultimately possessing you in some small part.

I wasn't sure where to put this since it seemed to cover multiple areas, but initially I though "how could you write a book about something like this?" specifically in the style of The Left Hand of Darkness, where there is an entire society built around said peculiarity.

I found myself trying to figure out how to even begin, if nobody had names, I would think it would demand being in first person, but the very fact that there are no names (and I would think pronouns (he, she, it) in this case also) would make it difficult. As I am trying to wrestle this problem I began to wonder if using english to write the book makes any sense at all, the thought process of a society that has no possessives for people is so foreign to any language I've ever heard that I'm beginning to wonder if it's really possible at all.

I guess I'm just wondering what everyone else thinks about how the society would function and communicate if it were to exist.

 

[Jordan~]

There are still pronouns that function in the same way, and phrases that can be used easily as a name - this is probably how names started in the first place: people looked at you and called you Long-legs or Small-ears because that was your most distinctive attribute in your social group, or Good-hunter or Runs-fast. According to a study cited on Wikipedia, dolphins do something similar, referring to eachother using whistles that describe other things - symbolic names, like the names Lily and Rose.

"Robert" means "Bright-fame", for example, "Fergus" means "Man-vigour", Matilda means "Battle-might". Many names are also patronyms, honorofics and religious dedications - examples are Benjamin ("Son-of-the-right-hand"), Alexander ("Helper-of-mankind") and Michael ("Who-is-like-God?"), respectively.

If you're the tallest person in a crowd and someone shouts, "You! Tall man!", they catch your attention as surely as if they'd shouted your name. Or even moreso for something like, "You with the red hat and the black eye!"

I mentioned in another thread that I'd like to live in a world where possessives were obsolete, so I'd be happy to brainstorm with you about what a world without a notion of possession could mean. There could be no notion of property, for one thing, and relationships would be considered differently - a child would not be their parents' child and they would not be their parents, the child would be the child born to those parents and the parents would be the parents who bore that child. I think that would change the way people thought about eachother. Equally, in a committed relationship you wouldn't be able to speak about 'my girlfriend' or 'my husband' - you would have no way of verbally claiming one another. You could say, 'the one I love', or 'the one who loves me', but you couldn't claim possession of them.

I'll have a look and see if there are any languages with no concept of possession. There's a language with no way of counting past two or talking about any relationship between any two numbers or talking about any quantity, distance or period of time in a numerical rather than relative way, so it wouldn't surprise me.

 

[Jordan~]

Here's a pretty comprehensive article I found about names which may be of assistance. A cursory look suggests that names are a cultural universal, though there are variations surrounding when someone is named, whether or not their name changes during their life, etc., and obviously what constitutes an appropriate name, the structure of a name, etc.

As closely as I can tell, possession is also a universal concept - that surprises me. There is again, however, great variation - in some languages, some things can only be possessed and in other languages some things can never be possessed. In the latter category, ownership of the things that can't be possessed can still be expressed by circumlocution ("the rain that I own" vs. "my rain"), so if you wanted it to be impossible to express possession you'd need to consider the wider implications on the language that made even that sort of circumlocution impossible. I suppose having no words for ownership is the most obvious one.

 

[Bryson]

If people had no names, bullying would be the norm!

 

[Solitaire U.]

It is not possible for possessives, ie. nouns/pronouns not to exist in a world whose organisms depend upon possessives ie. nouns/pronouns to exist.

 

[Jordan~]

We can exist without thinking in possessive terms, i.e. "the food I eat" as opposed to "my food". Possession is a social construct.

 

[Solitaire U.]

Whether you deem it 'my food...' or 'the food I eat' is a moot point. You must own the food, via acquisition of some sort, prior to eating, no? How is it possible not to think in degrees of possession under these circumstances?

Edit: strike 'think' replace with 'exist'

 

[Jordan~]

No; your ownership of the food is your assertion to your exclusive right to use that food and to delegate that right to others as you deem appropriate. That is socially defined - if that right is not acknowledged by your social group it does not exist. It's a matter of the legitimacy of a claim to the exclusivity of the right to use, and that legitimacy must be conferred socially or else asserted by force.

You can pick the food up and take a bite of it, but that's not the same as owning it. As much as you could then finish eating it because it's 'yours', you could say, "I've had my use of this food, now someone else can use it," much as you wouldn't take a drink from a stream and say, "I own this stream and all the water in it," and much as you wouldn't, if you were walking in the countryside and found a bramble bush growing by the roadside, believe that you would have to own that bramble bush to eat its berries - unless you were very strictly obedient of the law and knew that someone probably technically did own those berries.

You needn't own food to eat it. Haven't you ever stolen a candy bar? Do you own it? Not legally speaking, you don't. It just has to be there. If we didn't think in terms of possession, we'd think, "There is food there. I can eat the food I need," rather than, "There is food there. I must acquire some of it so that I am allowed to eat it."

Who would tell you that you can't eat the food that's there? On what grounds? They can't own it because they can't express the concept of ownership - that's one of the premises of this little thought experiment - so the only sure way they can stop you from eating it if they don't want you to is to use force, or to find some way of convincing others that you shouldn't be eating that food so that the fear of repercussions prevents you from eating it. They would need to express it as a taboo, probably - something about you means that it's wrong for you to eat that food.

When we want to steal a candy bar, we are aware that the shopowner owns the candy bar by way of an economic transaction. That economic transaction was sanctioned by the state, which claims successfully a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within your area, by definition. We know that if we were to violate an economic transaction sanctioned by the state by stealing, we would be challenging that monopoly, and therefore challenging the state, and so we're aware that the state may rally some of those to whom it delegates its monopoly in order to use force to stop us, i.e. the shopowner can call the police.

Do you see the difference? A kind of Garden of Eden state versus the reality in which we live. In the first case, the only reason not to eat the Forbidden Fruit is that God said you couldn't; in the latter, you can't eat it because it's not yours.

 

[Darby]

If you're the tallest person in a crowd and someone shouts, "You! Tall man!", they catch your attention as surely as if they'd shouted your name. Or even moreso for something like, "You with the red hat and the black eye!"

Actually in my world kind of delved into this thinking that the population had the same physical characteristics/appearance. in fact what I imagined was a really dull cartoonish world where everyone was gray people without faces and very simple limbs. Felt almost like one of those depression commercials.

As closely as I can tell, possession is also a universal concept - that surprises me. There is again, however, great variation - in some languages, some things can only be possessed and in other languages some things can never be possessed. In the latter category, ownership of the things that can't be possessed can still be expressed by circumlocution ("the rain that I own" vs. "my rain"), so if you wanted it to be impossible to express possession you'd need to consider the wider implications on the language that made even that sort of circumlocution impossible. I suppose having no words for ownership is the most obvious one.

This is one of the things I'm currently trying to tackle, is the very idea of living in a world where that sort of thing isn't possible, or at the very least never needs to arise because the language/thought process simply isn't there (which actually sounds exactly like creating a world where it isn't possible, so I guess I just said the same thing twice).


But yes, this is one of the very good points you bring up. I'm on my break so I will have to wait to finish replying to everything.

 

[Jordan~]

We don't get depression commercials here on account of how diagnosis and medication are dispensed by the NHS, but I can imagine how they go. Hmm, I'd have thought a world without names would be one where interpersonal variations were far more important because, as I say, they would be the only way to identify one. Do you mean you were thinking of a world where names would never come to be used? An intelligent species where individuals have no names is represented in sci-fi by hive species like the Borg in Star Trek, the Geth in Mass Effect, etc.; you could probably have a human society so strictly regimented and hive-like that people refer to eachother exclusively by their functions, in a similar way.
I think that's been done to death, though. It'd be more interesting to think of a way to have no names but still have a recognisable and realistic human society. I suppose you just need to imagine going about your daily life not being allowed to use or know anyone else's name. You would just circumlocute your way around it, as I say - refer to people by their distinguishing attributes - but again, if you want to take the premise as far as you can, you could forbid that kind of circumlocution somehow.

 

[Solitaire U.]

So then a world without possession would require oppressive legislative levels, oppressive enforcement of said laws, and oppressive levels of voluntary or forced adherence...

...and yet, in this Eden of which you speak, possession will still be 9/10 of the law. A good point of departure for a meaningless circular debate, but a rather poor prospect for continuance of the species.

Do you have some insight about how to raise the young without possessing them in the process for their own protection?

 

[Darby]

Which is exactly what I'm trying to do. Whether it's even possible or not, I believe it is, just very difficult to do because of the way we think as a species. To eliminate the possessive of a person you would have to eliminate the possessive of objects to, simply because: finger is to hand as person is to the community(or something like that), so even the objects would work as a framework to ruin my idea.

I don't expect this to be something I figure out by tomorrow or this afternoon, it's simply something I'm curious about, perhaps living without possession is impossible.

Language in general poses a problem, simply because how could you refer to anything without representing some level of possession of it, however, I'm beginning to feel like we are moving from the kind of possession that a name holds and moving to some other form of possession, whether that must be tackled for the prior form to be null is also something I'm wondering about.

@Solitaire: I don't disagree, I'm just trying to figure out exactly what our definition of possession is at the moment. Because I think physical and other forms of possession however similar are different.

Physically holding something no doubt holds 9/10ths of the law, but the possession of someones attention or some other non-physical form I think is different. and is less necessary for existence.

 

[Jordan~]

So then a world without possession would require oppressive legislative levels, oppressive enforcement of said laws, and oppressive levels of voluntary or forced adherence...

...and yet, in this Eden of which you speak, possession will still be 9/10 of the law. A good point of departure for a meaningless circular debate, but a rather poor prospect for continuance of the species.

Do you have some insight about how to raise the young without possessing them in the process for their own protection?

You're assuming certain cultural universals that aren't true, but this isn't the thread for that. I've spoken about it elsewhere, like in ProxyAmenRa's thread. I'd further question whether or not law would be possible without a notion of possession, as to have legitimacy the law must have the endorsement of power, and I'm not sure if that could be conceived of without an idea of possession. As I say, though, not a discussion for here.

 

[Solitaire U.]

@Darby ie...raising the young, something along the lines of 'It Takes A Village' (though without the heavy-handed dependence on organized governance, obviously), might work to circumvent the 'reliance' on named distinctions. For example...the children, the teachers, the carpenters, etc. I'm familiar with a shantytown here in Mexico that functions more or less along these lines...

Of course, possession in the larger sphere then becomes an issue. Whose carpenters? The shantytown's, or in other words, the larger collective.

But this then moves us into the realm of hive societies, which are essentially fused into a single organism by way of dispensing with individual identities.

Ants and bees, which lack self-awareness, flourish within such a system. Let us dispense for the sake of argument with the fact that hierarchies exist within these societies. Your task then, is to hypothesize a means for humans to also flourish within these constraints.

Any parallel thinking on this?

 

[Jordan~]

Like I said above, I think the hive society idea's been done to death. It'd be more interesting to try to come up with some sort of society where there are no names, but there's also no hive mentality, imo.

 

[Solitaire U.]

Point of departure or lack of alternative...

You May Only Choose One.

 

[Darby]

I have definitely had trouble with coming up with a way in which this works while having a consciousness (It seems to me that to have a real consciousness you need the distinction between I/ME and YOU). Perhaps this is one of the reasons we don't necessarily think of bees or hive-things as individually being "conscious," however, the hive as a whole does have this. I think of it somewhat as the cells of the brain not having consciousness, but the brain as a whole does.

I guess I simply wonder if this is as far as it goes, that you simply aren't a conscious being by human definition without the ability to differentiate and hold possession of yourself and others.

I realize this specific area is like beating a dead horse, but I'm a tad drunk and am simply throwing my brain at my keyboard at this point.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

Names are fine, but the idea that something is "your" name should be de-emphasised. It should be made clear that it is just something people refer to you as since not referring to people as anything would get damned confusing.

 

[Darby]

Well and the fact that when you say "hey Artsu!" you are commanding or possessing their attention/focus. That was the idea that I was trying to shy away from, to create a society where doing something like that simply wasn't possible, that you couldn't possess someone's attention that way.

We as humans search for a way of identifying and categorizing though. I've been to 4chan and even though it's anonymous, you can still refer to someone by their post name, it is simply something that our society cannot escape, but, can we create or think of one that CAN?

 

[Solitaire U.]

4chan...an interesting example of how the possessive works both ways. I recall when USENET was in it's heyday, the 'name status' if you will went to those who contributed, rather than merely possessed, the most.

Of course, to give, you must first have. Like pollen to worker bees.

Re names...my first name, Chris. I don't believe I even recognize it in a possessive sense, being that it's a designation I share with so many millions of others...

 

[Darby]

See my name is as above, it is certainly rare enough that on some level it does possess a power if you use it, but at the same time I will answer to almost anything (specifically if it starts with Darb-).

 

[Solitaire U.]

I really like the concept of descriptive self-naming, such as is the norm on these forums. It's at least a bit more functional than given names, in that it informs somewhat about the self-perspectives/aspirations of the folks one interacts with, rather than merely an arbitrary designation passed down or idealized by one's parents.

Admittedly though, naming my sons was tremendous fun.

 

[Darby]

I was named after my dad's favorite movie, Darby O'Gill and the Little People.

I've also never heard anyone say that my name doesn't fit.

 

[Solitaire U.]

Heh, I talked my wife into naming our eldest son 'Vincent' because it evokes for me images of majorly chivalrous dudes in shining armor sporting huge swords and riding around on horses. Not that I envision, or even idealize, him ever doing that...in fact I'd prefer he didn't for obvious reasons. Point being that I think given names are rather meaningless in the larger sphere.

 

[Darby]

Don't even believe this is a legitimate name, but I really want to name a child VIllIA (Villia), because if you ignore the middle of the "A" and rotate it 180 degrees it's the same....Weird, I know, but I really like symmetry.

 

[Solitaire U.]

Well, we named our youngest son Varian. My wife claims it's a French corruption of a name popular in her native Cambodia in the 1960's, but I've yet to find it listed in any name database on the internet.

So to hell with legitimacy (we don't need no stinking legitimacy!). Villia sounds like a perfect name to me!

 

[Jordan~]

'Villus' is Latin for 'shaggy hair'.

Julia is the anglicised form of the feminine of Iulius, which comes from Iulus. Iulus is probably from Greek 'ioulos', meaning the downy hair of a young man's first beard, so funnily enough there's a connection with 'villus'.
Iulus, the noun meaning downy hair in Latin, can be used as an adjective, meaning 'having downy hair', which can in turn be used as a noun meaning 'a thing with downy hair', and therefore as a name. The genitive of Iulus is Iuli ('of Iulus'), which forms the root of Iulius. The nominal suffix is added to form a name (which must be a noun), and changes to the first declension -a in the feminine, giving Iulia.

By extension:
Villus → Villi → Villius → Villia.
Villia, therefore, would mean 'the daughter of a man with shaggy hair'. So it has some etymolgical legitimacy, it's just never been used. :P
A daughter called Villia, of course, may have to live her whole life being called Vi. Bear that in mind.

Also, here are some people called Varian - not terribly hard to find.
It has a Latin etymology and some use as a Latin-derived name (as you can tell by that link). Varian would be the anglicised form of 'Varianus'. Varianus has a meaning in its own right in Latin - diverse-coloured, variegated - but it's very rare. Alternatively it could be derived from Varus, which was a Latin nomen gentile, a surname of the noble class, like Julius or Brutus. If you're curious, it means 'bandy-legged'.

So "Varian" either means whatever the Khmer version of the name meant, 'multi-coloured' or 'belonging to the family of a bandy-legged man'.
It's also the name of the King of Stormwind. Your wife doesn't play WoW, does she? :P

 

[Solitaire U.]

Diverse-colored and bandy-legged...Damn, I really like that, and I must say Varian has shades of both those traits. Thanks for the insight!

 

[Darby]

Well if I get older and manage to keep the hair on my head and then have a daughter, then it would fit, I tend to have medium/long hair that is semi-kept.

 

[monsterfurby]

Getting rid of names and pronouns is an interesting thought to design a fictional society. Let's walk through the stages of human communication (not scientifically backed here, working from observation):

1. Announcing your presence and intent to communicate
This is where names and descriptors are seemingly needed. On the most prototypical level, you'd have a small group of people, each of whom has some sort of descriptor assigned to them that makes them unique. This is typically a verbal descriptor, a name, like "John". Now, taking away names and their importance, possibly because the society places great value upon names being a private or inappropriate matter, there are other ways to adress someone.

a. Unspecifically depending on need / Temporary names
"The being able to accomplish this task shall do it now."
"The one who spoke to me yesterday was quite handsome"
These are temporary descriptors which apply to a certain situation. They still outline a more or less specific person (the first example being less, the second example more specific) and might quickly mutate to become names. This is probably how naming started, after all. While it is workable, I think this approach very quickly loses its non-commital nature and becomes commonplace once certain characteristics about persons are becoming universal descriptors ("John the Blacksmith").

b. Physical form of address
Distancing oneself from verbal means, a society independent from names might well be more physically inclined. Eye and physical contact may also be used to mark a person. This creates a very immediate, temporary association and basis for communication which does not bind either party more than the other party. However, this could be highly impractical.

c. Group characteristics
To avoid filtering a specific person by name, society might have developed in such a way so as to compose itself in social situations only of a singular representative of each group. For example, if these groups are Green, Red and Blue, any social assembly would only consist of a member or closely tied party of Green Red and Blue, but not of several parties of the same group.

A variant of this could be seen in titular and clan names, which are very unspecific to the individual but highly specific to the group, filtering out the ones possibly addressed. If only one member of the Clan of the Iulii was in the room, calling them Iulius would be appropriate in ancient Rome, as they represented their clan at that point.

2. Talking about others
This is where things get tricky. How do you speak about others if you can not individually describe them? Approach 1a still applies, but 1b is already a problem when you, for example, want to tell the police who just robbed you. 1c I could imagine, but only if societal rules allowed for a certain recording and regulation. For example "Blue attacked me" can either be understood as "The Blue in the room at the time attacked me" or "The entity Blue as a whole attacked me".

3. Societal Implications
Removing the idea of individual distinction seemingly points at a "communist hive-mind" society which simply is a fancy way to say "anarchy". I would argue that this is oversimplifying the matter. The main thing it points to is a lack of long-term focus, an emphasis on the immediate. If you have no name, you need no one to carry it on. You can seek no fame because you are not distinct from the rest. You can however distinguish yourself through your immediate deeds - that is, the things you are doing RIGHT NOW, because the second you stop doing them, the identity of the one who did them will be forgotten.
This raises interesting implications about the productivity of such a society, and its overall goals. One the one hand, if there is nothing to achieve on the long run, how does the human mind handle working at all? On the other hand, if working right now is the only way to achieve anything, how can you justify not working right now?

4. The "Why"
This is probably the hardest part of the question. Why would such a society even exist? Natural phenomena that make a short-term, highly reactive system more efficient? Overcompensation for past developments? Evolutionary considerations? Ideology? Many possibilities could converge to create an explanation.

PS: I smell amazing potential for a short story at the very least. If you weren't already planning to write it, I certainly would

 

[CLOfriendOSE]

I think the fundemental problem lies within the sets that define our existence.

Something is either "real" or "not real", consequently anything "real" beongs to "reality". (I believe this has been stated in other words earlier in the thread).

Then, a society that functions with full awareness of the lie of the senses could live without possestion. As such, the individual would be a complete introvert, bodies would simply function out of survival instincts, while the perceived existence of the individual is radically different from their sensory input.

 

[Jordan~]

Getting rid of names and pronouns is an interesting thought to design a fictional society. Let's walk through the stages of human communication (not scientifically backed here, working from observation):

Ooh, I like this post.

1.a. Yes - I think a language would be required in which adjectives have no nominal associations, so someone can be handsome but it makes no sense to think of someone as 'a handsome', as you could in Latin - they can be undesirable but never an undesirable. If adjectives have no nominal forms, it's possible to describe people, but not intuitive to name them using those descriptors. Using roles as descriptors would very quickly result in naming, I think. Funny example: In Team Fortress, the roles of the classes (Medic, Heavy, Soldier, Scout, etc.) have come to be the names for the characters themselves as well as the names of the classes.

b. This is quite common in hunter-gatherer societies - when a hunting party goes out, they try to make no conspicuous noise, so a lot of communication is in the form of touches; naturally they get used to it, so when they go back to their villages, they use the same gestures to communicate. Of course, tapping someone on the shoulder commands more attention than just saying their name.
The idea of addressing others through communication brings something else to mind, though - the way children raise their hands to be allowed to talk in class at school. Perhaps a non-contact visibible gesture could be used to indicate that you wished to talk to someone.

c. Of course, you can still address someone and command their attention this way, it's still a name. British nobles were commonly referred to neither by their name, surname nor title, but the area in which their title was held - so the Duke of Beaufort might be called Beaufort, even if his name is David Somerset. If you walk into a crowded room and shout, "Beaufort!", he'll still be compelled to look round.

2. Talking about others
This is where things get tricky. How do you speak about others if you can not individually describe them? Approach 1a still applies, but 1b is already a problem when you, for example, want to tell the police who just robbed you. 1c I could imagine, but only if societal rules allowed for a certain recording and regulation. For example "Blue attacked me" can either be understood as "The Blue in the room at the time attacked me" or "The entity Blue as a whole attacked me".

2. Well, you just need to think outside of the parameters in which we currently communicate and what that enables. Would policing like that be possible without a way of keeping tabs on who's who? I think you would need to describe the person to someone who knew them, or wait until you saw them again and say, "Look, him!" It might necessitate that the enforcement of the law and the justice system would be more broadly delegated, so that there was usually someone present with the power to intervene - maybe based on age, where elders are considered wise and knowledgeable enough to decide.

3. There could be a culture of the joy of production. I've raised the example before elsewhere, because it's a classic one in anthropology, but in the Trobriand Islands, food production is so easy that only very few actually need to be involved in growing in order to feed the whole population. They attach prestige to growing, but the Polish anthropologist Malinowski said that the primary motivation for the growers to feed everyone else - food was stockpiled and taken as needed, they had nothing to gain from it - was the collective enjoyment of the knowledge that they had too much food. They took a sort of pride in the notion that they had stockpiles of rotting vegetables piled up in their storehouses that they'd never need, it gave them comfort. Similarly I think you could easily have a motivation to produce like that - people taking personal joy, pride and comfort in the knowledge that they were productive, or that the things that they produced were being used or just existed.

4. It could just be a coincidence, or an artistic conceit - the wiring of the mind was such that the 'natural language' that linguists are always trying to identify didn't permit naming; it was such that the idea of a person having a name was impossible.

 

[Melkor]

I struggle to comprehend existence without ownership.
If I did not have my own thoughts, my own space, my own cubone, my own designs...
Then life would have no value.

 

[Darby]

I struggle to comprehend existence without ownership.
If I did not have my own thoughts, my own space, my own cubone, my own designs...
Then life would have no value.

Well and this is one of those things I wonder if we can get away from. We move from Me/I to We/Us, but you are still talking about a specific group of things/people which YOU belong to. To "better all life" still says "life" and categorizes it apart from "death." I guess Im just saying that regardless of how big the area under which you categorize yourself is, you are still categorizing yourself, giving yourself a position or place.

Then, a society that functions with full awareness of the lie of the senses could live without possession. As such, the individual would be a complete introvert, bodies would simply function out of survival instincts, while the perceived existence of the individual is radically different from their sensory input.

I think what CLOfriendOSE said sums up my line of thinking really well when you take it to the absolute, but then finding a way to talk about that without being able to ever really feel/understand that seems difficult if not impossible.

At the end I'm starting to think if this is ultimately a conversation trying to find a society of God(s) (yes, the one we all know and love).