Working Naam Ke Vaaste on Benami Dealings: The politics of a name

Asking what was in a name, Juliet sighed on her balcony that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. By which she dismissed the nominal basis of identity, a declaration to which Gertrude Stein would add the tautological postscript in her 1913 poem, 'Sacred Emily,' that 'a rose is a rose is a rose', a reiteration Umberto Eco echoed in the concluding Latin epigram of his 1980 novel, The Name of the Rose: 'Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus' - the pristine rose remains only in name, we are left only with naked names.

Confronted with such flowery verbiage, the current tenant of the White House might mistake the rosy-eyed Juliet with Juliet Huddy, an ex-Fox News anchor, who alleged that POTUS had made osculatory contact with her in an elevator, and conflate Gertrude-Eco into a portmanteau illegal immigrant, who should be ICE-d.

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Such wars of the roses have topical relevance and resonate with headlines inspired by Donald Trump's baptismal binge of renaming geographical features to fit his fancy.

In what might be called nominal neo-colonisation, the MAGAmaniacal occupier of the Oval Office unleashed a terminological tour de force by renaming the Gulf of Mexico the 'Gulf of America' and, as a follow-up, rechristening Lake Ontario as 'Lake America'. This, in the context of the ongoing tariff tangles with the US' northern neighbour, might be interpreted as a curtain-raiser for a territorial takeover, which would make Canada the 51st state of the US--or the You Yes of Aye, as in You say Yes when I say Aye.

Far from pouring Texas oil on troubled waters, POTUS has gone on to moot an onomastic sea change for both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me, goes the old children's rhyme. However, as conventions and credos as diverse as international law, numerology, and superstitious belief would have it, monikers possess mojo.

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Namesmanship is gamesmanship by another locution regarding location. It is seen as an underhanded undermining of national sovereignty, be it the Gulf between Mexico and the US--'Poor Mexico, so close to the US and so far from god,' as former president Porfirio Diaz of the Amigo Country lamented - or the Lake of Lacuna between Washington DC and Ottawa PO (PO standing for Pissed Off).

Closer to home, New Delhi's dudgeon is high over the sneaky Chinese titular takeaway of Arunachal Pradesh by calling it 'Zangnam' (Southern Tibet). MEA is pulling no punches in letting Beijing know that that's not the way for the fortune cookie to crumble, not for all the chai in Chini - the Hindi name for China - notwithstanding all the sweet talk at next weekend's BRICS summit.

That names can literally cast a spell on one is central to numerology, the crypto-science which ascribes numeric values to letters of the alphabet, which, when totted up, arrive at a figure deemed to be either lucky or otherwise.

If the sum arrived at is unfavourable, extra consonants or vowels, or both, are appended to the name until - Abracadabra! - alphabetical arithmetic arrives at the magical password which will open portals of fame, fortune, and green card, even if by now the auspicious appellation resembles the verbal version of a corkscrew defying articulation by even such an epitome of elocution as Harivansh Rai Bachchan.

In diverse cultures and climes, names are believed to have mystical essence, knowledge of which would give ill-wishers power over one. Such a belief has resulted in the disguise of a true name known only to the family and a closed circle of intimates, cloaked by a surrogate designation for the outside, and possibly inimical, world.

Trump himself has a legacy of a name change in that his German immigrant paternal grandfather, Friedrich Drumpf, morphed into the anglophone-friendly 'Trump' as being a more winsome handle, if not a winning hand. Is POTUS' proclivity for the legerdemain of labelling an atavistic throwback to such Drumpferie?

Whatever be his motivation, the prez presses on with his epithetical enthusiasms, even if they are seen to be naam ke vaaste exercises, revealing him to be just another benami guy.