A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.
Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he's really in trouble.
Better to see the face than to hear the name.
Don't call me an icon. I'm just a mother trying to help.
How could I have been anything else but what I am, having been named Madonna. I would either have ended up a nun or this.
I came to live in a country I love; some people label me a defector. I have loved men and women in my life; I've been labeled ''the bisexual defector'' in print. Want to know another secret? I'm even ambidextrous. I don't like labels. Just call me Martina.
I don't like giving names to generations. It's like trying to read the song title on a record that's spinning.
I don't like your miserable lonely single ''front name.'' It is so limited, so meager; it has no versatility; it is weighted down with the sense of responsibility; it is worn threadbare with much use; it is as bad as having only one jacket and one hat; it is like having only one relation, one blood relation, in the world. Never set a child afloat on the flat sea of life with only one sail to catch the wind.
I know there's a Derby out there with my name on it.
I shall write a book some day about the appropriateness of names. Geoffrey Chaucer has a ribald ring, as is proper and correct, and Alexander Pope was inevitably Alexander Pope. Colley Cibber was a silly little man without much elegance and Shelley was very Percy and very Bysshe.
I sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be anything else but what I am having been named Madonna? I would either have ended up a nun or this.
I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.
If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.
In England, I'm a horror movie director. In Germany, I'm a filmmaker. In the US, I'm a bum.
In its purest sense, nicknaming is an elitist ritual practiced by those who cherish hierarchy. For preppies it's a smoke signal that allows Bunny to tell Pooky that they belong to the same tribe, while among the good old boys it serves the cause of masculine dominance by identifying Bear and Wrecker as Alpha males.
In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.
Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Misses (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense. Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master. If we must have them, let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to MH.
Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.
Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive.