The Magic of Names

i wanted to start this afternoon

with a question for all of you that

you’ll see up on this slide

what do these three words all of which

begin with the letter e

have in common earthsea elendil

and aragon some of you might know the

answer

some of you may think you know maybe you

vaguely remember having read

something that had to do with these

three names

but a lot of what i want to say today is

linked to these three names

because each of these refers to

[Music]

a set of books earthy is a world that

was created

by the writer ursula leguin

it started off as a trilogy but it grew

quite rapidly

into a whole series of books and short

stories

centered around this land that had

dragons in it and wizards

and other forms of magic elendil

some of you will remember is the father

of aragon

the father of the king who returns in

the lord of the rings trilogy

and there again we have a world that is

characterized by dragons

and wizards and other forms of magic as

well as simple folk

like hobbits and then finally in

the e that you see third on this list is

the e of aragon

right aragon who is a young dragon rider

born after many years of there being no

dragon riders in a world called

allegacia now you might be wondering

why do i talk about these things today

part of it is that times of crisis give

a lot of us time to read

when we are at home working we can’t be

doing that all the time

and we therefore have more time i think

to indulge in

reading and exploration of worlds and i

was rediscovering many of these

worlds for the second time as i

went through the recent crisis but much

more importantly

what i love about these three sets of

books right then the fact that all of

them

are involved with new worlds being

created

is that in each of them there is a

particularly

interesting quality in

earth sea there is a language called the

old town

the old language in which the world got

created

and from which everything received their

names

in middle earth for tolkien

we also have the language called elvish

which the ancient

people speak and in the world of

allagasia

we have a world which speaks something

called the ancient language

now what’s really interesting about each

of these is that

you cannot lie in any of these languages

all of them are known as the true speech

and it is impossible

because anything said in the true speech

is by definition true

so it is impossible to lie or perform an

act of deceit

in these languages and what’s really

interesting

is that the names that people possess

the true names

not just the names and labels that they

happen to be given

by others but the true names of each

person

the true names of fire of rocks

of the sea of wind of the earth itself

each of these is given in the old

language

it’s given in elvish it’s given in the

old tongue of earth sea

it’s given in the ancient language of

allegations and the world of aragon

now why is this interesting because in

ursula le guin’s books

as i think applies in the rest of them

when we control

the name of something we control

the thing itself and therefore spell

casters who want to cast a spell of fire

will say the ancient name

fire and then be able to cast a spell

with it

or if they want to conjure up a wind

they will say the name

wind in the ancient language and conjure

that up

now this is all from worlds that are far

away and worlds that are distant from us

but even in the world we live in in many

cultures including the abrahamic

religions

names matter one of the first things

that adam

does as the first man in the biblical

tradition

is he gives names to the cattle to the

birds of the air to every beast of the

field to all things in other words

and it is the act of naming that gives

each of those things their unique

identity why is this important for us

because as we think about what the arts

and humanities can do

i think a lot of it boils down to the

act of naming

we are naming the complexity we are

naming the variety and subtlety and

dynamism

of all of life and as we’ve come up with

good names

those are the names that stick and help

us to understand the world around us a

whole lot better

now let’s take an example of this that

is very close to

all of our hearts how did we name

this virus that is currently the source

of so much

crisis and anxiety and stress and nerves

for everyone

we started out by calling it the wuhan

coronavirus why

because it came from the chinese city of

wuhan

gradually as it became a much more

global phenomenon and many other

countries started to have

more cases than wuhan city or china as a

whole

people started to realize that they

couldn’t name it in that way

they needed to find other names and so

we started to call it the novel

coronavirus 2019

or nkovi 2019 right as a short form

now this is also interesting because

what it suggests is that it’s novel it’s

new but it’s a coronavirus we’ve known

other coronaviruses before sars right

the severe acute respiratory syndrome

was caused by a coronavirus and this

this current virus that we face

therefore is

novel because it gives us new qualities

and it is not one that we recognized

before

but then people also realized that after

a while it was

not so novel when the virus didn’t go

away and it persisted

and it stayed with us we started to

realize it wasn’t so novel after all

and we needed to find a new name for it

and then the world health organization

settled on covet 19

as a formal name right to capture that

it is a coronavirus

it happened in 2019 and therefore that

is the current name that we have

but i do wonder will this name last

because what happens

if as it looks increasingly likely

covet 19 is around for a very long time

what if it is also kovit 20 and kovitt

21

and covet 22. the names

matter and i think the fact that we

haven’t fully settled on a name that

captures the full complexity

of the whole situation we’re in captured

by the virus

suggests that we haven’t really fully

understood it and we therefore have not

fully come to grips with the complexity

of the phenomenon

that we have to deal with here

and this is particularly important

because as we saw with the examples of

the old language

to name is to find truth and if we name

something

we give it a quality of truth that helps

us to recognize what it is and what it

isn’t

and some of the names that we’ve used to

deal with kovid

i think also show us that there have

been interesting dimensions

in each of the names that illuminate as

well as obfuscate certain aspects of the

crisis we’re in

many people talk about covet as a war

right we talk about

defeating the virus we talk about

quarantines and

clamping down on on the case numbers we

talk about flattening the curve

all of those are objects and metaphors

of war

but that name that war name for covid is

not enough

because what we find is actually when

you think about it who’s being defeated

here

who is the enemy in this war

some people refer to kovit as a journey

they say we have to take

this journey together and on that

journey we will learn

and we will acquire insights about what

exactly this virus is

but even that is an inadequate name

right because a journey suggests that we

know where we’re going

that there is a destination somewhere

but maybe there isn’t maybe there is

just this constant traveling

a constant process rather than any kind

of arriving

and that becomes interesting because we

also then can ask ourselves

who does the traveling and how do we do

it are all of us traveling in the same

way on this journey

or do some of us travel in great comfort

as we have to work from home

and knuckle down to safe distancing

measures

but others actually might experience

this as trauma or distress

that journey is not the same for

everyone which suggests to me that the

next image there the name of an ecology

if you call kovit an ecology then maybe

that helps us understand it a bit better

because we see that it’s part of a

natural process of evolution

in the world we start to understand that

actually

there are these natural life rhythms at

work in it

and maybe this is just the worlds and

the earth’s reaction to

capitalism and climate change and many

of the other

stresses and pressures that we as

humanity have put on it

but even that i think is not enough as a

name because

what we see is that the ecology

captures linkages amongst people but in

a very cold and impersonal way

in other ecologies the lion eats the

gazelle the gazelle eats

grass and there is an order of things

right a natural order

but i’m not sure that that’s always the

case with kovid because there are some

people who are suffering

in the crisis which suggests to us that

they don’t they may not

deserve it they may be suffering because

of no fault of their own

they may be deprived for certain reasons

they may not have access to

as much of the internet as others do and

therefore working from home

or staying distance from others becomes

much more difficult for them

and i think we need to start

understanding that covid is also a

community phenomenon

it’s a community because all of us have

moral relationships with those around us

and that name of community therefore

captures something very different

compared to the war the journey and the

ecology names

that have already been given to this

crisis

i think that’s important because if we

accept that naming is a key part

of what the humanities do then actually

we haven’t done a good job

yet of fully naming the complexity and

range and depth

of this whole phenomenon that all of us

find ourselves in

what i wanted to do was also give you

other examples of why naming

matters what are some of your favorite

examples of a name where when you look

at it

you feel this thrill go down your spine

and think yes that is

absolutely accurate that represents the

thing so well that it must be the true

name of this object

sometimes we get that sometimes we don’t

these for me have been examples where

i’ve looked at them and thought yes

this really captures a particular aspect

of something better than say

covetous war or ecology or community

even

has captured for the virus when barack

obama talks about the audacity of hope

in his second part of his autobiography

i think that captured the name of a time

it was about being audacious about

having large

dreams but it was also audacity of hope

it wasn’t anger it wasn’t frustration

it was hope the fact that there is

something to be optimistic about in the

future

even if we don’t necessarily feel that

way now that captured the name

and the tenor of a time when lee kuan

yew

you know decided to title one of his

books hard truths

that i think captured something as well

right hard

difficult aspects of things that we go

through and truths right fundamental

realities that we cannot run away from

and when you put them together these

hard truths capture both something about

the phenomenon he’s describing

as well as the times that he was in

and the broad challenges that a place

like singapore can face

some time ago i read a wonderful book

about identities

that all of us have by the philosopher

amateur sen

and amateusen described what he called

plural monoculturalism

the fact that in some countries and

societies we may have many different

ethnicities and religions all coexisting

but they never interact with each other

so they’re plural

because they’re all there in their

diversity but they are monocultural in

that they never actually interact with

each other

there isn’t any kind of energy between

them

that i thought captured a phenomenon

that we want to be careful about because

diverse societies like singapore and

many other parts of the world

probably don’t want to be plural

monocultures they want to have

interactions amongst the cultures and be

truly multicultural

thomas hardy in the mayor of

casterbridge describes human beings at

one point as

we fettered gods of the earth

that for me is another set of names that

is just beautiful

sends shivers down my spine whenever i

read that novel again

the fettered gods of the earth are

fettered in that we are chained we’re

imprisoned

we don’t have complete freedom but we’re

gods of the earth

we have dominion and control over other

things

we have an element of the divine in us

if you believe

several religious traditions that

believe that we are created in god’s

image

and that idea that we are therefore both

fettered and gods

at the same time is for me a truly

accurate description

of what humankind is like and therefore

the kinds of both struggles

and opportunities that we have to deal

with

the last two examples actually no let me

start with shakespeare first of all one

can’t have a

talk on humanities and and the arts

without at least mentioning shakespeare

briefly i think

and when shakespeare in hamlet right

characterized

the condition of humanity in this

dilemma of to be or not to be

i think he was naming the complexity of

life as well that we are often stuck in

this existential struggle

between an active life to be

fully ourselves or not to be right to be

alienated and fragmented from what we

are

both of those are key parts of the

dichotomy that exists for all of

humanity

and finally i wanted to share two

examples with you that are a bit more

personal

and these are the titles of my poetry

collections because i wrote many of the

poems

and then struggled for the longest time

with what to call each of the

collections

the first title morning at memory’s

border came to me

when i was actually in texas i was at a

writer’s festival and i heard so much

poetry around me that i think

i finally was able to give a name to my

own book

and i called it morning at memories

border because i think of memory as a

place

it has borders to it and when morning

comes

a lot of those delineations and those

boundaries get lit

they are illuminated in ways that were

not there in the dark of night

but each of the words matters as well

because i was writing a lot about

mornings

about memory and about borders both

physical and

literal as well as figurative ones so

put together the name worked both at the

individual words level

as well as all of them working as a

composite

similarly with the other title second

persons i called the

the book that because each poem was

written as a second person poem

addressed to a you of some kind some of

these were love letters to people

some were love letters to god some were

letters to myself but all of them were

written in the second person to a u

of some form but what was also

interesting was that book was my second

book and it meant therefore that it was

a second version of me and the name

therefore started to work on multiple

levels

and i think these are quite critical

ways of thinking

about how we name things because when we

get the name

right something falls into order about

the world that we’re in

and the more we try to do that get names

correct

the more we’ll be able to adjust to the

kind of demands that the world has of us

i think my challenge that i would leave

you with to end off the talk

is to really ask yourself what is your

true name

what would your name be in the old

tongue of earthsea

or elvish or the ancient language of

allagasia

because when we seek our true names we

start on this lifelong adventure

that in some ways never ends because

maybe our true names also change and

evolve along the way

some of this is determined by the work

we do the vocations and the missions

that we have

but most importantly my favorite word

for what i do

is calling a calling because

i’m called to do public sector work or

called to be a poet and what is it that

we call people

we call them by their names so as you go

about

listening to the calling of your own

name what i hope you will find is that

you hear it increasingly clearly

over time and that when you do find your

true name

you find that your place in the world is

truly well defined

and that you can start giving to others

as much as you receive from them

thank you very much for having me

you