When you stop to think about it, names are actually quite a cool concept. They are probably as old as human speech itself and must have been ‘developed’ for lack of a better word to directly identify individual persons. Perhaps even slightly more awesome was the invention of titles. Titles are both more versatile and more static than names. Static because titles tend to refer to a single function (e.g. emperor, doctor or police officer). By this title and hence role alone a person is not defined. More interesting however is the versatility of these titles. Titles are dynamic, automatically making them interesting. But more important is their ability to interfere with names.
If all of the above sounds slightly confusing or vague, allow me to give two solid examples. Everyone knows the name Julius Caesar. Lesser known is that his full name was Gaius Julius Caesar. Now for a quick history lesson; the Romans used a slightly different naming system than us today. In our Roman friend’s terms, Gaius was his given name (e.g. Jack, Maria, James, Wendy). Julius was his family name and finally Caesar was his ‘nickname’ (Romans used to have personal nicknames). Funny here however is that after Caesar’s death his nickname became an actual title and honorific (oddly enough the same happened with his successor, Augustus).
The second example is the famous ancient writer Sun Tzu. Even if his name does not sound familiar, the title of his magnus opus should; The Art of War. Actually ‘name’ is not quite a correct term here. This because ‘Tzu’ is in fact not a surname as one might believe, but is a title, meaning ‘master’. ‘Sun Tzu’s actual name was Sun Wu. I fear Chinese naming conventions are even more complex, but I’m not going to bring that cascade upon me. So far about Sun’s name.
‘Well Vicious, this is cute and all, but why the feck should I care?’. A valid question, and let me explain what drives me to think about it. First of all, my own given name (standard Western system of given-name, middle name, family name) is rather unusual which generally makes it the topic of conversation for the first few minutes upon meeting someone new. This can be either cute or annoying depending on my mood (on a side note; please do not try to rhyme unusual names, it’s not that they are not funny per se, it’s just that we have already heard them ALL. That’s right, even that really clever one that just escaped your thick skull). Second is the rise of the internet and online gaming. As anyone who has ever used a message board or played a game online might have noticed people do not tend to use their given names on the internet. A possible reason for this could be the fact that online, all you will ever be recognized (at first) is a screen name. Hence all manner of clever, obscure and exotic names turn up.
A second reason could be human’s nature to try and be unique (ironically at conflict by nigh-everyone’s desire to be ‘normal’). This desire might result in more ‘serious’ sounding names rather than funny or clever names that ‘stick’.
Titles are almost nonexistent online though. The only ones I can think of at the top of my head are ‘administrator’ and ‘moderator’, yet those hardly apply. An exception to this are some (generally lesser skilled) ‘gaming clans’. Clans are group of people that play the same online game together, usually against other clans in team matches. In my period as a gamer I always noticed that bad clans tend to use titles, like ‘general’ and ‘sergeant’ in warfare-oriented games or ‘king’ and ‘lord’ in fantasy settings. Again I would like to emphasize that these tend to be the worse clans when categorizing by skill.
With this in mind I’d like to introduce the thorn in my buttocks; students. Just as gaming amateurs want to rank themselves according to an official sounding title, so I have noticed that student-run organizations do the exact same thing. The only difference is replacing ‘general’ with ‘president’ and ‘lord’ with ‘treasurer’. Bonus point if they pick Latin titles. Does this sound like I’m nitpicking? Allow me to explain. I could not care less if I never had to hear the term ‘commissar of internal affairs’, by all means, I’ll give you space to masturbate over your private title any day of the week. But don’t look at me funny if I don’t know what a ‘secretary of vague pseudo-official sounding title’ does. Just tell me that you organize the extracurricular trips or something. Also, I have NEVER heard anyone use the title ‘treasurer’ outside of fraternities. Perhaps this is just a case of good luck, or perhaps the people I’ve met were more humble and would say ‘I’m in finance’.
Now I’d like to conclude with the following comparison; in the ‘gaming community’ (I’m using the word community loosely here), titles and ranks are given only in groups (clans) where people don’t really know what they’re doing. In real life, the same applies.
Now I’m fecking tired and I’ll quit writing before I go off on some tangent non-related subject.
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