Naming Beyond Pointing: Singularity, Relatedness and the Foreshadowing of Death

Abstract

This paper argues for a theory of naming beyond the philosophical concerns with proper names as the test case for theories of reference. Moving forward from anthropological concerns of naming practices as forms of convention, I argue that names in the Indian tradition participate in a wider problematic in which the name opens the person to the world as it also makes her vulnerable to the world. Taking examples from my long time ethnographic engagement with families in Delhi and juxtaposing these examples with iconic moments of naming in stories from two Indian epics, the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata (including their vernacular versions) the paper shows that attention to how names are used alerts us to such existential questions as whether one remains the same person to oneself and to another over the course of a life time.