Names

(228 votes)   Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

W. H. Auden
1907-1973, Anglo-American Poet

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(200 votes)   To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual. Immigration officials did this to refugees; husbands routinely do it to wives.

Erica Jong
1942-, American Author

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(182 votes)   I shall write a book some day about the appropriateness of names. Geoffrey Chaucer has a ribald ring, as is proper and correct, and Alexander Pope was inevitably Alexander Pope. Colley Cibber was a silly little man without much elegance and Shelley was very Percy and very Bysshe.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(172 votes)   I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(147 votes)   Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.

English Proverbs
Sayings of British Origin

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(111 votes)   Don't call me an icon. I'm just a mother trying to help.

Princess of Wales Diana
1961-1997, Wife of Charles, Prince of Wales

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(98 votes)   I don't like your miserable lonely single ''front name.'' It is so limited, so meager; it has no versatility; it is weighted down with the sense of responsibility; it is worn threadbare with much use; it is as bad as having only one jacket and one hat; it is like having only one relation, one blood relation, in the world. Never set a child afloat on the flat sea of life with only one sail to catch the wind.

D. H. Lawrence
1885-1930, British Author

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(95 votes)   We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.

Milan Kundera
1929-, Czech Author, Critic

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(84 votes)   I came to live in a country I love; some people label me a defector. I have loved men and women in my life; I've been labeled ''the bisexual defector'' in print. Want to know another secret? I'm even ambidextrous. I don't like labels. Just call me Martina.

Martina Navratilova
1956-, American Tennis Player

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(79 votes)   A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.

Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862, American Essayist, Poet, Naturalist

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(79 votes)   Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive.

Thomas C. Haliburton
1796-1865, Canadian Jurist, Author

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(76 votes)   How could I have been anything else but what I am, having been named Madonna. I would either have ended up a nun or this.

Madonna
1958-, American Musician, Singer, Actress,

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(76 votes)   I sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be anything else but what I am having been named Madonna? I would either have ended up a nun or this.

Madonna
1958-, American Musician, Singer, Actress,

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(76 votes)   If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862, American Essayist, Poet, Naturalist

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(44 votes)   The invisible thing called a Good Name is made up of the breath of numbers that speak well of you.

Edward F. Halifax
1881-1959, British Conservative Statesman

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