{"id":88487,"date":"2015-08-04T12:42:40","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T16:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=88487"},"modified":"2015-08-04T12:56:27","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T16:56:27","slug":"no-name-is-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/04\/no-name-is-safe\/","title":{"rendered":"No Name Is Safe"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"gregory-peck\"<\/a>

Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird.<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

It has been a bad summer for the iconic characters of Southern literature. A couple of weeks ago, a New Hampshire man named Huckleberry Finn was accused of rape. This was surely not what his parents had in mind when they named him.<\/p>\n

When the world learned that Atticus Finch had aged into a crotchety reactionary with KKK sympathies, we thought of the children. Not just those thousands schlepping their mauve trade summer-reading paperbacks all over the country. But those named after what we believed was literature\u2019s best dad; Atticus was the #1 boy\u2019s baby name in 2015<\/a>. As one baby-name Web site puts it, \u201cAtticus, with its trendy Roman feel combined with the upstanding, noble image of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>, is a real winner.\u201d As the\u00a0\u00a0New York Times<\/a><\/em> put it, \u201cFans of Mockingbird<\/em> have been crestfallen and disbelieving that their hero could be so changed, but perhaps no group more so than those who chose that name for their children.\u201d <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. I take a different view. Look, it\u2019s easy to see why parents would be dismayed after thinking they\u2019d chosen a name that neatly sidesteps any nasty associations. Family names are fraught. There are complicated feelings, unpleasant memories, politics. Who gets to claim names, and who gets stuck with them? There are traditions and pressures and baggage, to say nothing of cultural and religious conventions.<\/p>\n

Literary names are not so burdened\u2014or so it seems on the face of it. Naming your child Howard Roark or Ignatius Reilly may earn him a few raised eyebrows, but that\u2019s probably what you intended. Bella or Katniss is unlikely to change much, even if you do. (Of course, being literature, it is open to interpretation. For some, Esme evokes unwholesome fixations; to others, merely a charming character. We won\u2019t even touch on the Kevin Smith-inflected embarrassment of being a Holden.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

But as Harper Lee has shown us, nothing is \u201csafe.\u201d This isn\u2019t Scarlett or Mrs. de Winter; Harper Lee invented<\/em> this character. If she\u2014God\u2014says he\u2019s a complicated man of his times rather than a paragon seen through a child\u2019s eyes, well, who are we to argue? In a way, it must take the pressure off. Atticus Finch as we knew him was a lot to live up to. Impossible to live up to, maybe. Whatever the author\u2019s real intent in regards to publication, isn\u2019t that a takeaway? As written now, he\u2019s for all the world just another relative\u2014flawed and ambivalent and human. Maybe parents can claim they were thinking of the ancient sophist. Maybe the name will just tell the world a man was born in 2015, when we finally stopped believing anything was permanent.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been a bad summer for the iconic characters of Southern literature. A couple of weeks ago, a New Hampshire man named Huckleberry Finn was accused of rape. This was surely not what his parents had in mind when they named him. 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