Cypherina

Leon Howard, Herman Melville: A Biography (1951):

While Melville was getting better physically and looking around for a new literary inspiration, he attended what the Berkshire County Eagle called "a startling novelty in this region"—a "fancy dress picnic" at which Lizzie carried off the honors in the character of "Cypherina Donothing" dressed in a costume of cyphers.

YHWH

Gershom Scholem, "In Jewish Mysticism," in On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism:

[The] basic idea of the Torah as the Name of God was the source of certain other Kabbalistic developments. It goes without saying that such an assertion about the Torah does not refer to the document written in ink on a scroll of parchment, but to the Torah as a pre-existential being, which preceded everything else in the world....
One of the most important variants of this theory occurs in Joseph Gikatila, a leading Spanish Kabbalist who wrote at the end of the thirteenth century... In his view, the Torah is not itself the name of God but the explication of the Name of God. To him the Name meant exactly what it had meant for the Jewish tradition, namely the tetragrammaton, which is the one and only true name of God. He writes: "Know that the entire Torah is, as it were, an explication, and commentary on, the tetragrammaton YHWH."

Later, in the same essay, Scholem quotes Pinhas of Koretz:

Indeed it is true that the holy Torah was originally created as an incoherent jumble of letters. In other words, all the letters of the Torah, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy, were not yet combined to form the words we now read, such as "In the beginning God created" or "Go from thy land," and so on. These words, on the contrary, were not yet present, for the events of Creation that they record had not yet taken place. Thus all the letters of the Torah were indeed jumbled, and only when a certain event occurred in the world did the letters combine to form the words in which the event is related.... As soon as something happened, the corresponding combination of letters came into being. If another event had occurred in its place, other combinations of letters would have arisen....

Hydrox

I have, in my lifetime, encountered an inordinate number of black-and-white rabbits and guinea pigs—not, to my knowledge, any cats or dogs, but I could be misremembering—named Oreo.

Just once—just once—I'd like to meet a little bunny Hydrox. Is that really so much to ask?

Ideya

There are two things beautiful about this name, which I first discovered through the late Russian animator Ideya Garanina. Elegant, even.

The first is its subtle manipulation of Ida, a name I long ago established as a personal favorite.

The second is its playful twist on the observations of Walter Benjamin—"The Russians ... like to give their children 'dehumanized' names." What I find so lovely is that here, instead of heavy machinery, we encounter the realm of thought: manual labor gives way to mental labor.

Naum

From Benjamin Hale’s “The Last Distinction?: Talking to the Animals” in this month’s Harper’s:

 Proving that an animal could be “taught” to communicate by language—as narrowly conceived by [Noam] Chomsky—became a holy grail for language researchers. Herbert Terrace sought this prize by way of Nim Chimpsky.

There is something glib and thoughtless about bestowing on another conscious being a pun for a name. Glibness and thoughtlessness, as one sees in the documentary [Project Nim], are just a couple of Terrace’s winning traits, and Nim Chimpsky’s name was only the first indignity in a life full of indignity and suffering, which is the main subject of Marsh’s film. 

You know, I don’t know. I just don’t know. What separates “bestowing on another conscious being a pun for a name” from “naming your child after yourself or another loved one”? I just don’t see there being all that much of difference between having yourself generations of Anthonys and what Hale perceives as symptomatic of Terrace’s abusiveness.  Is Ramon Jr. different in degree or in kind from Nomar?

My partner, Jacob, was named after his great-grandfather Israel—and might we not think of wrestling with angels as simply another term for the highest form of wordplay?

Maybe I am sensitive here. As I have described elsewhere, it was not until the seventh or eighth grade that I came to like my own first and middle names, Hannah Maitland, and this was only because, as I then realized—I was attending a friend’s dance performance at Dance Theater Workshop, this I so clearly remember—“Hannah Maitland” contains the word “animate” and, in full, nearly rhymes with “animation.” How could I dislike a name, I reasoned, that seemed to forecast my lifelong obsession with cartoons?

And does not the fact that she calls them Roc and Roe singlehandedly redeem Mariah Carey’s decision to name her son and daughter Moroccan and Monroe?

I think, too, about a name that, like Noam and Nim—and name—begins with an n sound and ends in an m one: Naum. I have once before discussed it in conjunction with Noam, but I should I clarify that, as far as I can tell, the two names are etymologically distinct. Noam is like Naomi, while Naum, the alternative spelling of Naoum notwithstanding, is not. But I would not look askance at you if, say, you decided to name your son Naum in commemoration of his great-grandfather Noam. Would that be glib?

I, meanwhile, would choose to name a son Naum for a wholly different, but no less (it would seem) glib, reason: its resemblance to “zaum”—in English, “transreason,” “transration,” or (my preferred translation, courtesy of Paul Schmidt) “beyonsense.” Working backwards, that would make Naum mean not “comforter” but something like “in mind” or “to[wards] reason” or “in a sense” (“innocence”? “incensed”?).

Ah, show me a monkey capable of such reasoning and I will gladly be his uncle!

Emoquette

The other day I received word from my health insurance about contraceptives soon to be covered at no charge. I thought I would do us all a favor and deem which ones had names suitable for humans (just in case, of course, your birth control should fail):

YES (i.e., names already more or less established in the United States of America) 
Leena

Errin [sic]

Camila   

Heather
Portia
Amethyst
Yasmin

MAYBE (i.e., names that bear at least a passing resemblance to more or less established names)
Aviane
Balziva
Jolivette
Velivet
Ocella
Amethia
Lessina
Alesse
Mircette
Kariva
Cyclessa
Gildess
Junel
Cryselle
Zarah
Zeosa
Jolessa
Loryna
Zovia
Briellyn
Natazia
Azurette
Aranelle
Orsythia
Emoquette

NO (i.e., names I thought were “Neocon” when I first read them)
Necon

Anomie

Not a name.

But I do not see why not.

I mean: Sophie, Marie, Amelie, Elodie, Aimée.

And: Naomi, Noemi, Noemie, Noam, Naum, Naomh.

Not to mention: Annabelle, Analise, Analy, Anaïs, Anatole.

And: Anaphora, Ennui, Aporia, Différance, Dilettante, Angst, Découpage, Agony. 

Newgate

Is this name even a name? What's in a name? Rose, rose, rose, etc.

Newgate Callender used to review crime fiction for the New York Times Book Review. What a funny name, thought I, when a back-of-a-book-blurb by Mr. or Ms. Callender was pointed out to me—indeed, an ideal name to chew on.

Ah, but this was before I learned about the Newgate Calendar, the moralizing tales of felons and their hangings that were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

So, you got me. I don't especially care about pen names, though I am especially fond of using the nom de plume of one Samuel Clemens to rejoin those who disparage wordplay (and who cite his famous dismissal of puns while making their case).

Watershine

Watershine Woods is a garlic farmer. You can read about her in Garlic, Garlic, Garlic by Linda and Fred Griffith.

There's also Maybelline Watershine Pure Lipstick.

Tractor

I found this in a Russian book on Russian names (What is your name? Where do you live? by Aleksandra Superanskaya). It was listed along with other post-Revolution names, such as: Marten ("furnace"), Elektrostantsiya, Podyem ("rise" or "recovery"), Smichka ("union"), Energiya, Rem (standing for "Revolution, Electrification, Machinery"). See also Aviakhim.

Aviakhim

Walter Benjamin:

The Russians, too, like to give their children "dehumanized" names: they call them "October," after the month of the Revolution; "Pyatiletka," after the Five-Year Plan; or "Aviakhim," after an airline. No technical renovation of language, but its mobilization in the service of struggle or work—at any rate, of changing reality instead of describing it.