https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact The Significance of Names and Renaming en-us 2019-03-27 01:43:23 UTC 2025-11-02 08:58:16 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/icons/Planets.png hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521124 By: Nnedi Okorafor

Characters in this book use nicknames or slurs that take away their native name and individuality. Binti reclaims her identity by using her full name. Later, she simplifies her name to pay respect to another culture. When someone does not respect her, they do not use Binti's name.

• "'These 'dirt bathers' are a filthy people,' the first woman muttered" (16).
• "'Tell the girl to sit up,' the chief said,...'this creature'" (61).
• "'Look strong, girl'" (73).

• "'I am Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka of Namib,' I whispered...'Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka of Namib, that is my name,' I said again" (31-32).
• "'You may just call me Binti,' I whispered, keeping my head down. My first name was singular and two syllabled like Okwu's name and I thought maybe it would please the chief" (61).

]]> 2019-03-27 01:47:42 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521124 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521242 By: Laila Lalami

Naming and renaming is a large theme in this novel. Every person and land that the Castilians conquer, is stripped of his/her/its original name.

• "This book is the humble work of Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori" (3).
• "Estebanico was the name the Castilians had given me when they bought me from Portuguese traders" (7).
• "Of all the contracts I had signed...it traded what should never be traded. It...erased my father's name. I could not know that this was just the first of many erasures" (82).
• "Just Estebanico - converted, orphaned, and now dismissed with a boy's nickname" (149).
• "my master had no nickname for me. A nickname is something you use to tease someone, whether out of spite or out of affection, whereas all the things he called me were said without a hint of humor or irony: El Moro, El Negro, El Arabe. On most days, he did not even call me anything" (49).

• "I imagine that, in keeping with our naming conventions, my people would simply call it the Land of the Indians. The Indians, too, must have had a name for it, although neither Senor Dorantes nor anyone in the expedition knew what it was" (5).
• "they gave new names to everything around them, as though they were the All-Knowing God in the Garden of Eden" (18).
• "This was why, when he spoke of that village later, Dorantes called it Corazones. Only later did it occur to me that my Castilian companion had returned to the habit of giving new names to old places" (245).

]]> 2019-03-27 01:48:26 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521242 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521298 By: Ursula K. Le Guin

This novel uses nicknames to disrespect a native culture as the one in power tries to enslave them. The invading species also renames things in their own language without learning the indigenous tongue.

• "'Damn sulky little green bastards'...creechies...'Primitive races always have to give way to civilized ones. Or be assimilated. But we sure as hell can't assimilate a lot of green monkeys'" (20-21).
• "they labeled him 'creechie-lover'" (121).
• "Selver, was his name. Sam, they'd called him, till Lyubov stopped Davidson from giving him what he deserved and made a pet out of him, then they'd called him Selver" (31).

• "this world, New Tahiti, was literally made for men" (12).
• Lyubov: "He had also come to like the Athsheans' names for their own lands and places...Sornol, Tuntar, Eshreth, Eshsen - that was now Centralville - Endtor, Abtan, and above all Athshe, which meant the Forest, and the World" (105).
• "There aren't trees to cut on Rendlep. That's the place you call Dump Island" (181).

]]> 2019-03-27 01:48:49 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521298 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521379 By: Mat Johnson

In this novel, characters fight over naming rights and ownership of their experiences for publication.

• "since I was the one to discover it, I believe it should be referred to as, um, the Jeffree Tube. Yes. So if you could refer to it as the Jeffree Tube from this moment forward, I would appreciate that" (111).
• "you're already invoking naming rights. You don't even know what this thing is...and already you're claiming it as your own property?" (111-112).
• "If there is something down there, something huge...whose ownership claim is that going to be?" (113).
• "Whoever goes down there owns this. Movie rights, book rights, TV rights. Action figures" (128-129).
• "We've established first contact, and established our respective stakes in intellectual property and other rights of exploitation" (132)

]]> 2019-03-27 01:49:12 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521379 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521476 By: Petruta Naidut

"To assign a name is to assign an identity, to write a history and create a cultural context which will stay with a place for a long time, if not forever" (51)
Renaming involves erasure and appropriation of "land, language and history" (51)
Columbus' "extraordinary possessiveness displayed in his propensity for naming and his avoidance of native names" (52).
"there is a growing consciousness among the English that the more they explore, the less they seem to know and such acts of naming become signs of this" (56).]]> 2019-03-27 01:49:52 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521476 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521508 By: Jeanette Marie Mageo

This article talks about the practices of European's as they took over Pacific Islands.

"Shortland's narrative is flagged by bestowals of European names on all prominent landmarks - as if older place-names did not exist, as f it was the places themselves...that were to be 'discovered.' These naming practices were a typifying feature of European voyages of discovery" (20)]]> 2019-03-27 01:50:02 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521508 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521539 2019-03-27 01:50:12 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345521539 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345524282 By: Catherynne M. Valente

Names are not as significant in Valente's novel, because there is more respect in the "conquering" of other species. However, one of the character's names plays a significant role.

• "'Hello there, cutie! My name is Altonaut Who Runs Faster Than Wisdom Along the Milk Road, fourteenth Lyric of the Aaba Verse, and I'll be your galactic liaison this afternoon!'" (30).
• "'It's a family name, honeybuns. Don't make fun, now. It's not nice.' 'You're the Road Runner. Meep, meep'" (31).
• "'You're the roadrunner.' 'That's what you call me, and look, Dess, I like you a lot, but I've nibbled heaps of memories in the last twenty-four hours so I know what a Looney Tunes is, and frankly, I think it's a bit insensitive. Oo's time is far too valuable and volatile to dribble it away calling me Altonaut Who Runs Faster Than Wisdom Down the Milk Road, but at least he uses part of my actual name, because that's respect, isn't it?'" (130).

]]> 2019-03-27 02:07:19 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/345524282 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/348999836 2019-04-05 16:35:02 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/348999836 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/349000989 During WWII, Jewish people in concentration camps were tattooed with a series of numbers and were referred to by the number rather than their names.]]> 2019-04-05 16:38:16 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/349000989 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/349002618 African slaves, when sold in America, were branded by their white "masters" to show ownership.]]> 2019-04-05 16:42:22 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/349002618 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/349003805 "Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself"
-Philosopher's Stone, ch. 17

People in the books who have never had contact with Voldemort have a deep fear of him because their fear of the name makes him less human. In other first contact narratives, conquerors do not use names because it dehumanizes those they want power over.]]> 2019-04-05 16:45:38 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/349003805 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/349010381 By: Facing History and Ourselves

"The operation was...painful and extraordinarily rapid...It seems that this is the real, true initiation: only by “showing one’s number” can one get bread and soup...we became used to showing our number...weeks and months were needed to learn its sound in the German language. And for many days, while the habits of freedom still led me to look for the time on my wristwatch, my new name ironically appeared instead, a number tattooed in bluish characters under the skin."]]> 2019-04-05 17:02:11 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/349010381 hayleydpendleton1_1 https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/352438701 By: Maoz Azaryahu

Renaming "is a common strategy employed to signify the break with the past" (385).
"Place names are not mere signifiers of 'objective facts' in space, but are embedded into systems of meaning and partake in social and ideological discourses" (387-388)
"Renaming...is involved in the semiotics of political shifts and ideological reorientation...involves rewriting the history" (389).
"Renaming...has an immediate effect on daily life, on language, and on space...a conventional strategy of doing away with the past by consigning it into public oblivion.]]> 2019-04-17 21:54:11 UTC https://padlet.com/hayleydpendleton1_1/namesinfirstcontact/wish/352438701