No Name

When the British ruled India, they were mystified by the practice of having no last name, or surname, associated with an individual. People used to be known by their given name and their father’s name. This made it very difficult to identify who were members of the same family, an important attribute for the civil order that the British were planning to impose.

So, they passed a decree to force people to take a surname. “Sure,” said people in one part of Gujarat, and took the last name that described their profession---Patel, or farmer. Unfortunately, that profession was fairly common, so more or less the entire region became filled with Patels. We were back at square one.

That amusing incidence aside, the British were right. They eventually made the system work, perhaps with some modifications to account for a large number of people having the same last name. However, they were lucky in that people at least had names. 

What if no one has a name?

That would be unthinkable, especially in this day and age. When we are introducing ourselves to a stranger, the first thing we mention is our name.  That is our identifier, one of the defining terms for who we are.

Without having a name, the processes we have built up to create and sustain our civilization will be all gummed up. How can you open a bank account, carry out transactions, borrow a book out of library, or vote without some identifier associated with you?

On a more social note, how will you be able to deal with your friends or others you interact with? Of course, you can use descriptors like, he-with-long-hair, or one-who-walks-with-a limp, to identify who you are talking about, or to catalog in your mind your past interactions with that person.

How cumbersome and unworkable will that be? Will we have enough memory to sustain relationships with a vast network of people if they did not have names? I suppose we will be no different than our ancestors, the chimpanzees. They seem to be able sustain a social network without names. However, those are small intimate networks, not vast ones like ours. And Chimpanzees don’t have bank accounts.

The biggest mystery to me is how not having a name will affect us as individuals? How much of our personal identify is tied up with our name? Will not having a name remove an anchor, setting our ship of self-awareness adrift?