Appearances are deceptive, for hitherto the expression What's in a name? has not been a question but a saying with the meaning that names do not matter. The idea dates back at least 420 years, to William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Scene II) in which Juliet says to Romeo from her family's rival house of Montague:
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. ...
Now, as far as this play is concerned, we may agree with Juliet that it does not matter what Romeo's name is, and that he will be 'equally perfect' without it. However, can we accept, in this day and age, that Juliet (and William 'imself?) call rose "a name"? No, Rose is, but rose is a word! And the difference between words and names is as fundamental as in set theory the difference between a set and its one or more members. (Even a singleton is not identical to its only member.) The members of a set may all have names, and yet, even if these names are all different there is a noun, such as rose or, at least theoretically, a noun phrase, such as human being which refers to all of them individually, and to the class collectively.
Once we use the word name in its proper sense, the question What's in a name? becomes a real one to which an answer diametrically opposed to what is implied in Romeo and Juliet suggests itself. What, for instance, would Juliet, whose Italian name is Giulietta, have thought of Romeo if his first name had ended in an a instead of an o; would she still have fallen in love with him? (Traditional Italian is not the only language to have no, or hardly any, sex-and gender-transcending names for persons. Full names for boys and men end in o, and those for girls and women in a, or else e, in Italian. The male name Andrea is an exception.) Of course, there are cases in which the one name or the other does not make any difference, but in too many other cases there is a tiny difference, a huge difference, or something in between. Names or systems of naming may express and remind us of sexual irrelevantism, if not sexism, or onomastic exclusivism; they may express and remind us of the beliefs and practices of political and religious, or other denominational, ideologies; and they may express and remind us of the verbal symbols and symbolism of a particular speech community, or a group of such communities. It is considerations to this effect which constitute the content of my prose poem.
As far as its form is concerned, What's in a Name? consists basically of four stanzas of four lines of eighteen to twenty syllables long (with history pronounced |HIS-tri|); only the last stanza contains two extra lines of fifteen and fourteen syllables long. Each of these long lines —too long for an ordinary poem— consists of two predefined halves of approximately the same lengths, so that the prose poem can very well be presented at either full width or at half width, especially on pixel screens; and, later on, also on paper. There is no planned meter or rime scheme, but those who are sensitive to it will notice the rough-and-ready alliteration in phrases such as sounds and syllables (|SAUNDZ an SI·l·a·b·alz|) and the more sophisticated alliteration in phrases such as capable and inclusive (|KEI·p·a·b·al and in-KLOO·s·iv|). (For the meaning and use of alliteration, see my Vocabulary of Alliteration.)
