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 (b.1956) Czech-born American Sportsperson
You should never name an animal which is not yours to keep, or which you intend to eat.
—Deborah Boliver Boehm (b.1946) American Travel Writer
Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.
—English Proverb
No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
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 Novelist, Poet
No better heritage can a father bequeath to his children than a good name; nor is there in a family any richer heirloom than the memory of a noble ancestor.
—James Hamilton (1814–67) Scottish Protestant Minister
In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
—Hubert Humphrey (1911–78) American Head of State, Politician
Who hath not owned, with rapture-smitten frame, the power of grace, the magic of a name.
—William Cowper (1731–1800) English Anglican Poet, Hymn writer
A person with a bad name is already half-hanged.
—Common Proverb
A good name, like good will, is attained by many actions and may be lost by one.
—Unknown
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
—Unknown
We do what we must, and call it by the best names.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
With the vulgar and the learned, names have great weight; the wise use a writ of inquiry into their legitimacy when they are advanced as authorities.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann (1728–95) Swiss Philosophical Writer, Naturalist, Physician
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 (b.1942) American Novelist, Feminist
Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth’s marvels, beneath the dust of habit.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
And we were angry and poor and happy, and proud of seeing our names in print.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
The names that do the serious damage are the ones we call ourselves. The stereotypes we give ourselves are the ones that matter in the long run, not the ones imposed on us by other people.
—Judith Rich Harris (1938–2018) American Psychologist
He lives who dies to win a lasting name.
—Henry Drummond
A man’s name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) American-British Essayist, Bibliophile
God has many names, though He is only one Being.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
—Burton Hillis (William E. Vaughan) (1915–77) American Columnist, Author
A name truly good is the aroma from virtuous character; it is a spontaneous emanation from genuine excellence.—Such a name is not only remembered on earth, but it is written in heaven.
—James Hamilton (1814–67) Scottish Protestant Minister
Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
If names are not correct, language will not be in accordance with the truth of things.
—Confucius (551–479 BCE) Chinese Philosopher
A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
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) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Critic
Whatever you lend let it be your money, and not your name. Money you may get again, and, if not, you may contrive to do without it; name once lost you cannot get again, and, if you cannot contrive to do without it, you had better never have been born.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
Named softly as the household name of one whom God had taken.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) English Poet
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