Hein - On Names

                                    

                                          
On the subject of assigning names; they aren't as special now as my history teacher tells me that they used to be. I guess it's not to say that names themselves are hollow now or anything; they still mean something. They're surface. 
                          
What's in a name? Language, an understanding of one's identity and culture — yeah? I guessed.  A name is what you call someone or something that's not yourself. So imagine a chair. That chairs' name  happens to be Chair. Why? Because that's what you call it. If it were conscious — it would respond to "Chair". You and I would call each other 'man', 'woman', 'human', or something ridiculous like that. Like Homo. Sapien of course — ha! Anyway, the difference between a human and a chair in this context is sentience I guess. 
                          
Chairs can be happy with the name 'Chair', because they lack the ability to object to it. They don't need to know which chair you're talking about. To us, the sentient beings — the masters of chairs; their kind are interchangeable with one another as a whole. But like their responsive masters, they are still characteristically different.  
                          
One chair might have some wicked-sick battle scar from that time your 'eccentric' cousin, Ripcord, tied his brainless dog to it then dragged it through two sets of doors, and three different parking lots. 
                          
Another might be so fucking old and dusty that you'd swear on every known God and your own mother that if one more squishy, ungrateful ass planted itself on the unwelcoming, splintering, plastic seat, it would collapse in some awkward fit of forced suicide. Chairs; interchangeable by preference of their masters but still uniform in purpose. 
                          
At this point you're probably going: what in the sweet tangible fuck are you talking about? I laid it out for you! My name, by preference of my parental units, is Hien. My best friend's name is Switchboard and I actually do have a cousin named Ripcord.
                          
My full name is Hienzyket. What the hell, right? My point is — names come from the depths of preference. Sentimentality and conscious beings. While interchangeable as a species - we are not interchangeable by character. 
                          
We have names that don't reflect our identification as part of the human race. That's character. Well, a part of it. We are human - and our preference towards technology in this age is a characteristic of our species as a whole. Our names are an individual characteristic that bases itself on the predisposition of the whole.  
                          
I learned that the dominant names three hundred years ago were somewhere in the range of Tyler and Ashley. I have no idea where or how 'Tyler' translates to "Door keeper of the Inn", but those were more complicated times I guess. What if you were trying to speak with your friend Tyler but the Inn's door keeper wouldn't quit?
                          
Now days with our inclination towards more material things - we go the literal route. My dad took it a bit too far though. He could have named me after the very thing that our species has passion for. The very thing we prize most - but no. 
                          
He named me, his only, beloved son, after his greatest personal passion; Ketchup. Hienz fucking Ketchup. Heinz-fitty-seven was too long. So mashing it all up into something that faintly resembles the English language was good enough. Lucky me. For your reference - I only have the one friend and my name is only the half of it.