Quotes About Names

My middle name is Nicole. It's so weird because my mom is from El Salvador, but my sisters and I have Irish names - Christy, Kelly, and Erin. And Christy and Kelly, they're not even girls' names! In Ireland, they're boys' names. And somehow, my mom was in El Salvador dreaming about Shamrocks before we were born.

A certain critic -- for such men, I regret to say, do exist -- made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.

We have names for everything. What if we forgot about those names? And we stopped seeing things as something? What if we just observed things, watched things, without giving them a name, without coming to a conclusion? What do you think would happen? You would transcend everything.

So I had all the names, three names, and that's good to have on a soap.

Nomenclature, the other foundation of botany, should provide the names as soon as the classification is made... If the names are unknown knowledge of the things also perishes... For a single genus, a single name.

For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.

Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of the tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn't allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.

If it is a joint return, we are instructed to print the given names of both husband and wife. But since some of the names that husband and wife give each other are hardly suited to print, we must proceed cautiously.

Procedure names should reflect what they do; function names should reflect what they return

There's a man going 'round taking names / And he decides who to free and who to blame / Everybody won't be treated all the same / There'll be a golden ladder reaching down / When the Man comes around.

A poet's job is to find a name for everything: to be a fearless finder of the names of things.

I am probably going to pay for this at some point, but I think pretty much everyone I come into contact with is fair game. So I use real names sometimes if the poem says it happened like that. It feels right if I use the real person I reference. Of course the poem is all lies, even when it's true, so I guess I can sleep at night.

He was Jimi Hendrix! He didn't sound like anybody else but himself. He was like Charlie Parker in his way of playing, he played well, he was a person that made waves. When you heard Jimi Hendrix you knew it was Jimi Hendrix, he introduced himself in his instrument... You know, many radio stations play records and a lot of the times they don't call out the names who you just listened to, but when they play Jimi Hendrix, you don't have to tell me, [you know] it's Jimi Hendrix.

When I was starting out, it seemed like there were so many girls who were known by their first names, who were unique, who all had idiosyncrasies and characteristics that made them individual. Those girls stuck around; you'd work with them season after season. But now it's completely different.

All names and forms are the garbs and covers under which the one life is hidden.

You probably don't call home and say, 'Hi, mom. I am facing Pete Schourek tonight.' Names and stats don't do it. You have to do it out on the field.

My dad's name is Vernon and my mom liked the initials, V. V. My sisters and I got named Victoria, Valerie and Vincent so we'd be V. V.'s, too. But, then when you start getting pets' names that start with a 'v,' it's a little embarrassing.

When I touched my hand against the Western Wall and placed my prayer between its ancient stones, I thought of all the centuries that the children of Israel had longed to return to their ancient homeland. When I went to Sderot and saw the daily struggle to survive in the eyes of an eight-year-old boy who lost his leg to a Hamas rocket, and when I walked among the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem, I was reminded of the existential fear of Israelis when a modern dictator seeks nuclear weapons and threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map - face of the Earth.

. . .There are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark. . . Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless.

But I have always thought that these tulips must have had names. They were red, and orange and red, and red and orange and yellow, like the ember in a nursery fire of a winter's evening. I remember them.

I think cats would have an even worse attitude if they found out how stupid their names were.

Biblical names are hot again.

The Earth is not dying-it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.

The song still remains which names the land over which it sings.

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people must unite or they will perish.

The inside jokes weren't jokes anymore. They had become stories. Nobody brought up the bad names or the bad times. And nobody felt sad as long as we could postpone tomorrow with more nostalgia.

Slavery remained in the Deep South by other names - in prison programs with charges over nothing and eternal debt that threatened every African-American in the South right up through World War II. And that was after killing three-quarters of a million people, destroying cities, and creating hostility that exists to this day over the the Confederate flag and the racism it symbolizes, all brewing out of bitterness over a war that didn't have to happen.

One interesting indication of Capablanca's greatness is that to non-chess players his name was better known than the names of all other chess masters together! This was due partly to his engaging personality and distinguished appearance: he was one of those exceptional people who at once stand out in a crowd.

My little scam in April '85 went like this: Give me $50,000; here's some names of some people we've recruited.

It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.

In English we must use adjectives to distinguish the different kinds of love for which the ancients had distinct names.

I'm not called Jude Law, I have three names; I'm called 'Hunk Jude Law' or 'Heartthrob Jude Law'. In England anyway, that's my full name. That's the cheap language that's thrown around, that sums you up in one little bracket. It doesn't look at your life. But if one looks beyond, there is actually a little bit more.

Love has seven names, / Which, as you know, are appropriate to her; / Chain, light, live coal, and fire - / ... dew, living spring, and hell.

Rich kids gave us their old clothes. They were the best clothes we ever had. We were these very pure, naive, poor children. The rich kids called us a lot of names but it never bothered us because we didn't know what the words meant.

Yazoo is the name of an old blues label and also a town in America. I like it because it doesn't mean a thing, it has no immediate connotations. That's what I hate about so many names today - they're so obviously fashionable.

Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.

Historically, many of the great names in alpine climbing seemed to have just gone climbing as training. In fact, the model alpinist has often portrayed himself in literature as a half-crazed nonconformist, living life on the edge every moment he's sober enough to climb. It is true that amazing feats of skill and daring have been accomplished using this rather random approach. For some climbers that "life on the edge" approach may be the only way they can accomplish these feats, but there are far better methods to prepare for the challenges of alpine climbing.

There were other stories and other names. Second Base Stace, who had breasts in fourth grade and let some of the boys feel them. Vincent, who took acid and tried to flush a sofa down the toilet. Sheila, who allegedly masturbated with a hot dog and had to go to the emergency room. The list went on and on.

There was a time when mapmakers named the places they travelled through with the names of lovers rather than their own.

...many foolish persons, wanderers from other parts, have the vain fashion of graving their names and the obscure places whence they come, upon its stones, which is silly and marketh the doer for a fool.

Science has heroes, but no gods. The great Names are not our superiors, or even our rivals, they are passed milestones on our road; and the most important milestone is the hero yet to come.

I'm entitled to collect my fair share of community property without being called names.

I didn't know the names of the flowers - now my garden is gone.

In America, dogs are viewed by their names first, breed second. And dogs live behind walls. It's an unnatural point of view.

Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.

I'm not the kind of actor that gets crazy with [directors'] names, what draws me toward a project is the material itself.

The only thing that would change would be the year, the names. It just got to be a repetitious life.

People's fates are simplified by their names.