True Names

Yesterday, as i was driving to a friends house to help him move, a cardinal shot across the front of my car from the trees along the side of the road. I sometimes wonder whether squirrels and birds do this intentionally, thrill-seeking. It happens more than i would expect. Lightning, say, happens quite a lot, but i've never in my life had it strike within twenty feet. Birds, however, often fly in front of my speeding car.

But that aside, what occured to me as this particular bird passed a foot or so in front of the grill, was what i would say if it in fact collided with the car. 'I hit a bird yesterday'? I suppose, if one hits another human, it's enough (at first at least) to say, 'I hit a man the other day'. But later, you'd probably want to know what man i had hit, know his name.

So it passed through my thoughts as i drove on that, were we to afford all species proper respect, i would need to know this cardinal's name. But to have unique names for every bird, and squirrel, and dog would require a fair amount of specification.

In my current job, i'm often having to look up various people in a database. When they tell me their name, i take the more obscure of the first and last, since that will tend to return just their records. I despair a bit when it's a Bill Smith or Elizabeth Jones, because each of those four names will invariably return several pages of records.

So, to be fair, I suppose we already need finer indicators. Bill Smith with Vanguard Publishing, Elizabeth Jones of Thirty-two Terrace, Northwest. Likewise, pets often assume the family surname, though clearly your dog is not of your blood, so that's a bit loose.

But in the moments after this cardinal missed my windshield, i was struck by the idea of home many more names-- beyond the given and the sur-- we would need to name individuals across all species. Seemed like a cumbersome idea at the time.