The American Spectator

br> Then cognition of the cognomen was twangily serenaded in I Got a Name by the late Jim Croce, who highlights the tension within the name as representative of both selfhood and a parental legacy. br> blockquote> em>Like the singin’ bird and the croakin’ toad br> I’ve got a name, I’ve got a name br> And I carry it with me like my Daddy did br> But I’m livin’ the dream that he kept hid. /em> /blockquote> br> In the Spanish system, names are no longer worn as a uniform — they are uniform. My friend John Smith groans he can’t take his wife to a motel without being winked at conspiratorially as a philanderer; they hear his name as myth. The Spaniards avoid this problem by making everyone into John Smith. Perhaps they should append sequential numerals, like a license plate or an e-mail address: “Hi, I’m Luis the fourteenth.” Try this over a PA at Madrid Airport: “Maria Ramos 1142, please pick up the red courtesy phone.” Or carved into a Barcelona oak, a heart with the legend: “Jose 816 loves Elena 544.” I guess when those Commies said they were against naming names, they were not kidding.

So fight for us, our darling Darling. Do battle for your identity and ours. Honor your parents and their vision for your life. Don’t let government types whisper into your brain about the security of the nondescript. Never sacrifice your fiesta for their siesta. Today you’re number one, tomorrow you’ll just be a number; eventually they will discount you as a supernumerary. Only they, with their imaginations compromised by conformity, could see you as an object of ridicule.

Blandishing you into blandness is soft fascism, but in the end it is just as tyrannical as brandishing the branding iron.