Do you like your name? Do you have a nickname? Did you know that your name has actually shaped the person you’ve become? Yeah, was doubtful too when I found out your name actually affects your personality. But the more I read and thought about it, the less doubt I had.
The brain always wants to simplify things, make generalizations based on available information. It calls on previous “experience” to quickly label people who wear certain clothes, or who speak a certain way which leads to us interacting with them a certain way (often times subconsciously) and we have the same thing with names.
I created a character one time that belonged to my partner and I in a shared universe and we were trying to decide what her name was. Newly formed, we knew bits of her personality and skills. I suggested Venus, and my partner vetoed it because ‘there are implications of that name we don’t want’. We eventually agreed to call her Melanie. Now you, dear reader, knowing nothing else about this character probably have some image in your head if what a woman named ‘Venus’ looks like as opposed to a woman named ‘Melanie ‘.
The thing I want to draw your attention to is that in the universe, there is nothing saying a person named ‘Venus’ would act a certain way, or a person named ‘Melanie’, or ‘Wilbert’, or ‘Deshawn’, or ‘Barbara’, but I bet your brain came up with something on reading those names?
Cyclical Reality
This is a phenomenon I’ve come to call cyclical reality. People expect someone named “Melanie’ to act a certain way and subconsciously expect them to act that way, which subconsciously pressures them into acting that way, such that ‘Melanie’ acts that way, such that people see ‘Melanie ‘ acts that way, thus expect Melanie’s to act that way… More simply put, it’s a reality humanity creates and enforces because it’s always been that way.
Now the fact that my name is Laura, and I grew up with that name, and was expected to behave the way a ‘Laura’ would act doesn’t really bother me. I don’t feel the need to go on a crusade to change the way ‘Lauras’ are seen in this world.
Except when it comes to being an author. Because ‘Laura’ is a female name, and females are still struggling to find their place as authors in the fantasy genre, which is my genre of choice. There are still too many people who won’t pick up a book written by a ‘woman’.
Why This is Bad
And cyclical reality guides more than our opinions about names. An example from an excellent movie that calls out the results of the expectations and realities of society, Nick from the movie Zootopia. People expect foxes to be con men, untrustworthy and unscrupulous, so he decides to go ahead and act that way, thus…
Such as the fact that CEOs in America are predominately older, white males. This is because people expect CEOs to look this way, so those are the people who get promoted, and become CEOs, and thus…
Then when questioned about why it’s like this, people try to rationalize it, making up excuses like ‘well women/POCs don’t have the ambition or mental ability to be a CEO. Their logic being, if they did have the skills and abilities, then they would be CEOs. Since they’re not, it must be their own deficiency.
Our Responsibility as Writers
This cyclical reality is reinforced in the stories we write as well. And they affect people’s perception of reality, because remember all stories do, so it’s important to recognize these and write stories in such a way to not perpetuate them. Make women CEOs, make black people doctors, make someone in a wheelchair a business owner, make a man a stay at home dad.
I wrote a whole book, where every time I needed a character, I made them female, unless there was a reason for them to be male. It felt weird because the default is always (white) male. I had beta readers comment on how many people are women in this story. I went and counted up all the characters and the number of each gender, and woman were still only 60% of the characters. I put effort into putting females in as much as possible and I still only ended up with 60% female characters.
Again, as writers we want to be aware that this is happening, both to be aware of it and to write better characters and societies. And while we can’t stop our brain from making its gross oversimplifications of people, we can be aware of it and consciously try to treat people as the unique individuals they are.
Seems a little less silly that parents (and writers) spend tons of time deciding what to call their children, though, huh?
