For as long as I can remember, I’ve wondered who we are, why we are here, and what it means to be human. At night, as a kid, I used to stay up late in my room, searching for answers in the night sky or listening to a late-night radio show my parents didn’t know about. People would call in with their stories, seeking advice or perhaps just someone to listen to them. I knew what it felt like to want someone to listen; this made me feel connected to those strangers on the radio, no matter how foreign their experiences were from mine. It’s in others’ stories where we often find ourselves.
Since that young age, I’ve known that we are more alike than not. Like a moth to a flame, I find myself drawn towards our similarities, a gravitational pull towards those things we have in common. It was George Murdoch, an anthropologist, who first noticed our similarities. He was studying systems of kinship around the world, and he realized that regardless of geography and time, there are common elements that exist between all humans, even if they vary by group. He called them cultural universals. Things like food preparation, dancing, and funeral ceremonies are cultural universals. So are language, gift-giving, and, funny enough (pun intended), humor. I was surprised to learn that names are also a cultural universal.
I used to think that names were something humans acquired over time, like tools or farming. When people talk about early humans, I never picture them as anything more than unidentifiable figures. It’s not even that they are nameless in my imagination; it’s that the thought of them having names never once occurred to me (and I think about names A LOT). In my imagination, those early humans grunted, pointed, and eventually began to use names. But I was wrong. Names have been with us all along.
According to anthropologists, there has never been a single society or group of humans that hasn’t used personal names. Ever. As far as we know, humans have always had and used names.
The first time I read this, I had to re-read it three more times before my brain could comprehend it. And thinking about it now, as I type this, tickles my heart and lights up my brain in a similar way as when I think about how big the universe is or how many different ways life can evolve (just look at a walking stick or an octopus!). The word mindblowing was invented for things like this. Learning this tidbit of human history felt like I had uncovered a secret passageway or found a missing puzzle piece I didn’t know was missing. Humans have always had and used names.
But why? This is the part I get stuck on.
When Murdoch discovered cultural universals, he noticed that they revolved around one of two things - human survival or shared human experience. For example, finding or making shelter is necessary for survival. Funeral ceremonies, however, are not. They are a ritual for the shared experience of death. A funeral might have a utilitarian purpose, like disposing of the body, but to explain it in these terms misses the real function. It’s a way to mourn, a way to honor, a way to celebrate the passing of another human being. Unlike cultural universals that revolve around survival, shared human experiences often go beyond utility - they hold meaning and are about connection.
If you want to think about names in strictly utilitarian terms, it’s easy to see that names identify and differentiate us from each other, creating a kind of order. With names, there’s no confusion about who does what task or what belongs to whom. Maybe that’s the whole answer to the question of why - we have names because they create order. But thinking about names in these terms is akin to describing funerals as a way to dispose of a body - sure, it’s accurate, but it lacks texture; it’s void of meaning and connection. I believe the purpose of names goes beyond utility and speaks to something more meaningful: we want to be seen for who we uniquely are, and we always have.
Humans are pack animals, but we also have a primal need to be recognized as individuals within, or even separate from, the pack. We want to belong, but we also want to be distinctly different. This tension between self and belonging is present in many aspects of our lives, including names. Our personal names represent us as individuals, while our family names attach us to others. Even though a name is individualized, the very nature of it is enmeshed within the collective. A name is nothing without its relation to others. It signifies that I am distinct from you, and you are from me.
The tension between these two desires - wanting a separate sense of self and a sense of belonging - is something we grapple with throughout our lives, particularly at major life transitions. (Remember my getting married existential name crisis?) Even most babies can recognize their name by seven to nine months, with many aware of it months earlier. Name recognition is the first sign a baby is developing its sense of self, and it’s incredible that we do this almost immediately out of the womb.
Names are considered so critical to an individual's humanity and identity that the UN included the right to be named from birth and the right to protect that name in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. And what is the first thing we do when we want to dehumanize someone - we strip them of their name, just like the Nazis once did and like our prison systems currently do.
This is why I cannot believe those early humans had names simply as a means of order. I believe that, somehow, they understood the struggle between self-identity and belonging. They needed to be seen as individuals, distinct from everyone else. They wanted to be recognized for who they were.
Isn’t that what we all want? Could this be the shared experience?
The first time I learned that humans had always used names, I couldn’t take it in. It felt too unbelievable to me that those unidentifiable figures in my imagination were actual people. But that’s what names do - they humanize us. And even though I didn’t know the names of those early humans, I knew they each had one. This made me feel connected to them in a tangible and meaningful way. As I write this now, I still feel that connection, as if a giant umbilical cord binds us through time and space. Like those late-night radio callers from my childhood, I can see myself in these other humans. They are far away, with wildly different life experiences than mine, and yet we are connected. We all want to be seen as distinct individuals - we want to be seen for who we are. And we always have.