What's In A Name?

In my sociology class last semester, one of the first things the teacher explained was how society influences us and we influence society back. He drew a diagram to simplify this concept that I think worked beautifully: It was two triangles in an hourglass shape, with "society" in one triangle and "you" in the other. The majority of the two never touch each other, but where they meet at the point (which he called "daily interaction"), the two are able to mix and change each other. In this way, psychology influences sociology and sociology influences psychology.

When I was thinking about this a week or two ago, I wondered if that didn't mean that our names (and thus, our parents) affect who we become. In my example (Aaron), my name meant that in elementary school where we would line up alphabetically by first name for anything, I always came first. While that might not sound like a great quality for a child to have (and I don't think I ever picked up on it that much at the time), it might have contributed to my love of vehicle-racing video games and general competitiveness. In other cases, it might define factors such as how tolerant you are (if you have a very difficult name) and how sensitive you are to your name (if you have a very common name). However, since this idea comes down to the ever-elusive Nature Vs. Nurture debate and since I lack the funding and support to do a proper longitudinal study, I can't go any further than this. However, there is one more thing I'd like to touch on.

One other relevant thing that I remember learning from sociology is the idea of Symbolic Interactionism (presented by George Herbert Mead), which among other things defines the difference between "Symbols" and "Gestures," both forms of communication. According to Mead, a Gesture is an uncontrollable response to something. For example, if you touch something hot, you reflexively pull your hand back (you don't think about it or get to decide). With Symbols (which Mead defined as something that both communicating parties interpret in the same way), you can decide how to react. The example given for this was that if the teacher said "the building is on fire" in our classroom context (and he did, though not in an urgent way), we could decide to run screaming out of the building, or sit there knowing that he was making it up. Mead used this to say that animals don't have society because they can't use symbols. When dogs growl at each other, Mead said this was because they are programmed to respond in certain ways to certain stimuli. And while there are those who take the exact opposite view (that we are the only ones that still have society because every other species on the planet was smart enough to know they didn't need it), that isn't why I brought up Mead. I brought up Social Interactionism for one of Mead's other points: "The I and the Me."

The concept of "The I and the Me" is basically this: our mind/inner self ("The I.") and our body/social self ("The Me.") obviously interact. However, in order for us to be upstanding members of society, our mind has to view our body as a separate person. Otherwise we won't know when we're doing something socially unacceptable. To continue from two paragraphs ago with how our name affects us, I couldn't help but wonder if our names only applied to our outer bodies and not our minds. Obviously, everyone else we know only knows us by our outer appearance (inconveniently and thankfully, we can't read each others' minds yet), so is it that much of a stretch to say that we only know ourselves by that name as well? Are people who "talk to themselves" actually having a conversation from their I to their Me?

If you ask someone what their name is, I'm sure they will tell you. But if you responded with "Not your Me's name. I asked what your I's name is," they will probably look at you funny. Besides wondering why you're curious as to what they've named their eyes, they probably wouldn't have a ready answer. It seems to me that most people see their mind and body as one, and allow their name to convey that in how it applies to their entirety. Perhaps people that we put in mental institutions for the "voices in their heads" (possibly with names attached) are just those who have given a separate name to the I controlling their Me. However, it seems like promoting the existence of your I is socially discouraged, almost like people don't want to have your I brought to the foreground unless it's through the medium of your Me. It's a very strange thought.