Dixon thought the idea for this column was all his own, but the fact that he would write it was inevitable.
I have had cause to ponder again the wonders of nominative determinism, after it was reported that a US congressman named Anthony Weiner had texted or twittered, or whatever, a picture of his, well, wiener.
I also wondered when the word “wiener” had finagled its way into the Australian lexicon – but that’s another issue altogether. I also wondered whether Congressman’s Wiener might not be the best-ever name for a band.
Nominative determinism (a phrase coined by New Scientist in the mid-90s) describes the apparent phenomenon of people winding up in jobs that suit their names. Or to look at it the other way around, winding up in jobs that their names suit. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with aptronymism – but the two are not strictly the same thing.
Nominative determinism in reverse was quite normal for some years, and in some places it still is. In the Olden Days (even before the Internet), people often took their names from what they did, or sometimes where they lived. So, for example, someone who made barrels might take the name Cooper. Someone who made horseshoes might take the name Smith. And so on. Cockburn is a name that fascinates me.
It’s a fair bet that in his formative years, the US congressman named above had quite a bit made of his surname. School playgrounds being what they are, it seems unlikely that his schoolmates would not have reminded him, possibly several times a day, that his surname was slang for penis. That must surely have some long-term psychological consequences, which might conceivably manifest themselves in his adult years in some sort of inappropriate penis-based activity. It may be a good thing that it was limited to a few shaky photos.
The guy who owns a bookshop near where I live is called Jon Page. I wonder if he harboured a desire to run such a business from when he was very young? I also wonder if he ever thought that being a servant to a knight might be a viable career alternative?
In 1952, Carl Jung suggested that things that are essentially unrelated tend to appear to human minds (trained as we are to look for patterns and for cause and effect) to be connected, either by cause or by meaning. We tend to assume that because one thing follows another it is therefore caused by it – summed up in the Latin phrase “post hoc ergo propter hoc” (“after it, therefore because of it”, as fans of The West Wing will recall).
So when Usain Bolt is the name of someone whose job it is to run very, very fast, we tend to think that one thing led to another – as if my parents had named me Ultrasexy Veryrich, for example, my life might have turned out very differently indeed.
Tiger Woods has a great name for a golfer – “wood”, in this context, referring to a golf club, not what you were thinking – though it’s appropriate for that, too, and raises the question of whether there’s such a thing as multinominative determinism. Gary Player is another one – he could have chosen any sport.
When the editors of the British Journal of Urology received a paper on incontinence, authored by JW Splatt and D Weedon, they might have thought someone was taking the piss, as it were. But it turned out to be fair dinkum. A similar thought may have crossed the minds of the editors of The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine when they received a paper, one of whose authors was a Takamichi Ichinose of the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Japan.
Joe Strummer really couldn’t have had an occupation other than guitarist. Alto Reed is a saxophonist (he played with the Silver Bullet Band, backing Bob Seger). Robert Jens “Bob” Rock is a music producer – he’s worked with bands like Metallica. Billy Drummond is a drummer.
There’s a deeper philosophical question that underlies nominative determinism, and that is of determinism itself (determinism, rather than predestination). Do you accept the notion of free will, and the fact that we can each of us write our own future; or do you subscribe to the view that everything that happens is caused solely by everything that has gone before, and what will happen in future is bound by laws of causality?
That’s more than enough to be worrying about for now. I’m about to write a letter to Bill Shorten urging critical changes to FoFA. But that’s more about being determined than determinism.
Dixon Bainbridge can be contacted via Professional PlannerHUB – www.professionalplanner.com.au/hub – unless the rules of causality dictate that he’s somewhere else.
