Somewhere in the middle of the twenty-third century, it became fashionable to take on a new name whenever a generation was added to one’s family. Names were increasingly a matter of personal style, used to commemorate the landmark events of one’s life, as a form of hero-worship, to curry favor with a patron, or to express one’s distinct individual taste. They became long and unwieldy, and people relied more and more frequently on initials for everyday use, if for no other reason than to keep the size of business cards manageable.
Then in 2298, the poet Alonzo W. J. F. P. H. F. McKenzie started a confusing new trend when he became the first member of his generation to adopt the name of one of his noteworthy descendants. Upon the birth of his first great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, Lila Courage McKenzie, he added to his own name the surname of Lila’s famous mother, the biologist and explorer of the Marianas Trench, and became Alonzo Weathers Jackson Feldspar Paris Hegel Fortune Bluegill McKenzie.
The trouble was that with seven or eight generations of descendants, anyone over the age of 250 could lay claim to being related to just about everyone else on the planet either by blood or by marriage. No fewer than 1,108 people petitioned to use the name “Martel” after the untimely death of the popular founder of the Luna colony. In like fashion, people scrambled to distance themselves from any association with the name “Milton” after the notorious Sydney Strangler was convicted on 27 counts of murder.
The administrative workload involved in documenting familial relationships and related naming rights threatened to bankrupt local governments throughout the world. In 2387, the lower legislative body of the League of Autonomous States passed a law establishing standards for personal names and limiting them to 128 characters (including spaces and punctuation) of the universal alphanumeric set. In response, name innovators went to work again, this time implementing a variety of shorthand notations. Alonzo W. J. F. P. H. F. B. McKenzie jumped on the bandwagon and became Alonzo Weathers+4 Bluegill-6 McKenzie.
Note: The assignment was to recycle a fragment written in the last 39 days of exercises in some new form. I started this exercise thinking about a song lyric—“Don’t let the past remind of us what we are not now” (Crosby, Stills & Nash, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”)—which I jotted down a few weeks ago while contemplating another story about “The Millennials.” (Not content to steal ideas from myself, I thought I’d steal one from CS&N.)
It has occurred to me that 1,000-year-old people will have many opportunities for regret—both about what they are, and about what they are not. But when I sat down tonight to write about that notion, this other silly thing fell out of my head. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with the song lyric. (I’ll steal from CS&N some other time.)
This explanation is a roundabout way of saying, “I didn’t even come close to the assignment on this one, but I hope you’ll like it anyway.”
© 2008 Edward F. Gumnick
Well, it is a silly thing that fell out of your head! I must confess to have gotten a little lost on this one – but then again I’m taking drugs that make my head foggy to begin with. I guess I don’t understand the idea here – they are trying to add names based on how many generations they have survived? Why did this become necessary? Why does living more than 2 or 3 generations necessitate added more names? Sorry, I’m clearly lost on this one.
You and me both. 🙂
It’s not that it becomes necessary, it’s more a matter of style, and to make distinctions between the many, many generations of family members who would be contemporaries if people started living hundreds of years. If John Q. Smith, John Q. Smith Jr., John Q. Smith III, John Q. Smith IV, John Q. Smith V, John Q. Smith VI, and John Q. Smith VII are all on the planet at the same time (and remain active in family and public life), people are going to have to get very creative about names so that other people will know who is being talked about.
I also wanted to explore the idea that just as it’s now common to name a child after a famous mother, father, grandparent, great-grandparent, etc., there will come a time when people might want to be associated with their famous descendants as well, and since they’re still alive to do it, why not change their names?
Oh, and please don’t mention your drugs again unless you’ve brought enough for the whole class.
hmmmm. Kind of an expanded version of living through your kids’ accomplishments. I see why that might be wished for, but the re-naming convention seems like it would make things muddier. Adding names of living persons younger than you seems to add to the confusion of who you are. Instead of making you more distinct, it makes you more like others, and so blurs the distinction between the two people. The idea of 7 or 8 living generations creates this issue of telling people apart, but taking each other’s names seems like compounding the problem instead of helping. I think we have to come up with a better way to live in our descendents shadows and separate that issue from keeping 7 living generations straight one from the other.
Hey, nobody said that the way they do things in the future is going to make any more sense than the way we do things now!
Think about the mix of logical reasoning and irrational factors that contribute to the naming of children already: vanity, tradition, the desire to innovate, the impulse to create an identity by way of a name, sentimentality, ignorance, fashion, hero-worship…. Then add to that the need to distinguish yourself from the family members who’ve been your peers for several centuries, as well as the many generations of younger people who share one or more of your names. Woohoo! It’s gonna be a crazy future!
(Have I ever told you that I was named after two adjacent stained-glass window saints?)
Which brings up another aspect we haven’t discussed yet. We live 1000 years with a healthy body, so what happens to sexual mores when a guy and a girl 7 generations apart in age start having sex? Or do we even keep having sex for 1000 yrs? How do our thoughts evolve around that? (As she lobs the ball into his court…)
My usual standard of never dating anyone younger than half my age is going to have to be reexamined long before I turn 100. Maybe I’ll just fix it forever at 21. [Sound of eyebrows raising.]
The whole concept reminded me (fondly) of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slapstick, with its story of social evolution following a mass renaming of the citizenry. Forget the ethical morass of pan-generational sexuality: how will we manage to keep track of all of our usernames and passwords in such a scenario?!
I really like the creative exercise of imagining a thousand-year lifespan. It’s like a trip back to Alpha Ralpha Boulevard. I’ll be thinking about it for a while, and that’s a rare gift.