If you are a computer scientist, you may believe that naming things is a hard thing, but I, for one, believe it's one of the best parts about owning things. Much
like a computer scientist who didn't get the memo about how hard it is,
I have invented a set of rules for the things I name, so that naming
things feels both organized and fun—like a game!
Let's
play a game right now. Can you guess the rules by which I name my
plants? My palm tree is named Paula, and my plumeria is Mary. My Tradescantia zebrina is named Sabrina, and my aloe vera (all thousand of them!) are named Vera.
Did
you pick up on the pattern? Houseplants all must have a feminine
monikers that somehow reference their species or common names. The only
exceptions are my Jamaican cacti Denise and Denisette, who are named in
honor of their ancestors' propagator from several decades back. While I
usually reach for the lowest-hanging fruit when naming a plant (my Eve's
pin bears the uncreative name "Eve"), there are definitely a few
outliers that stretch the limits of convention. My Phalaenopsis
(which I can just barely keep alive and hasn't bloomed in the four
years I've owned it) got called "Billie"...the Orchid. And my lemon
tree, through some inventive arranging of letters, is called Melany.
Some of my plants still don't have names, even though, by rights, they
should be christened after a year in my possession. What girl's name
sounds like "Huernia," and how will I ever name that weird fern until I
get motivated to try and figure out what it really is? I guess I could
just call it "Fern" and be done with it. The nice thing about giving plants the names of girls, is that so many girls' names are names of plants!
Naming
of phones, on the other hand, is a trickier matter. Do you name your
phones? I never hear people referring to their phones by name, but you
have to give them names if you want to be able to differentiate them in
the app store and on your home network! My phone-naming system got
started when I got my first cell phone, a Motorola StarTAC, and
subsequently called it "Stella." It was a nearly mindless choice, but it
set me on a path that defines how I name my phones to this day! When I
retired Stella, I once again made a mindless choice and named its
replacement "Stella 2." I think I stopped naming phones for a while
because I don't remember a Stella 4 or 5 even though I went through four
other phones between 2005 and 2012, but there was definitely a Stella
3. I think I was amused by the banality of bothering to give each phone a
name, while not actually bothering to give it a new name.
But
by the time I got my first Android phone, I knew something had to
change. It had to have a real name. A unique name! A name that honored
the grand tradition of naming my phone "Stella," while also not being
"Stella." I decided to stick with the celestial theme and name my phone
after a constellation—a constellation that, cleverly, also reflected the
phone's type, just as the original Stella had. I named it "Andromeda."
And from then on, the rules were set. I must name my phone after
something celestial, and the name must somehow reflect the model or type
of phone being named. I forget most of the titles I
gave my devices after Andromeda, but I do remember being pretty proud of naming one Sony
Xperia, "XPerseus," and less proud of naming one Google Pixel, "Pyxis "
(I had to do some research for that one—it's a tiny constellation that
can't be seen from the Northern Hemisphere). My Samsung Galaxy devices
are already celestial by virtue of their model names, so I expanded the
rules a bit and allowed them to be named after any characters from
Greco-Roman mythology even if they don't have a corresponding
constellation. So the tablet is called Galatea, and the Z-Flip is called
Zephuros. How will I further stretch the rules as I name my future
devices? Let's hope we don't have to find out any time soon, because I'm
contractually obligated to keep Zephuros for the next three years!
Other
goods that tend to last longer than three years also get
convention-guided names, albeit with less frequency than my constant
array of new plants and phones.
I named my first car "Zoot," (mainly because I wasn't allowed to give that name to a cat), my second car "Korg," and my third and latest car "Moog."
Although I never formalized a set of rules for such vehicular
appellations, it is clear looking back that my cars must have
one-syllable four-letter names.
My bikes, of which I've also named three, get vaguely nature-adjacent names that give a nod (OK, more like an obsequious bow) to their colors: Greenie, Snowflake, and, my new acquisition in just the past month, Midnight—a magnificent steed in matte navy blue.
The
only things I name with some regularity but without rules are my pets.
Is that too Wild-Wild-West? Should I establish a system? I'd consider it
for the sake of consistency, but I also know it would take the
adventure out of the final frontier in nomenclature. Sometimes having
rules makes naming things feel like a game, but too many rules
might make it feel like nothing more than hard thing in computer
science.
