Who Are You, Anne with an "E?": Naming in Anne of Green Gables Yeju Choi 11th Grade

A name is an intrinsic characteristic of an object: that is, a name represents the object and explains it most implicitly. This is the reason why people tell their names first when they introduce themselves, get little bit upset when their names are called in a wrong way, and decide a baby’s name carefully. Furthermore, the study of naming, which believes that name decides one’s entire life, is activated in Eastern countries. Here is a girl who puts emphasis on name as much as scholars of this study: the little orphan girl, Anne Shirley, who turns naming into one of the central issues in the novel that bears her name, Anne of Green Gables.

Through out the whole book, Anne puts strong stress on naming. She wants her own name to be different, puts special names on all the beautiful things like road, lake, geranium, cherry tree, pond, forest, and etc, and avoids calling the name of her competitor. Indeed, there are two main reasons that Anne emphasizes naming so much, and how these affects Anne’s behavior and the novel. First, Anne identifies the name with the object, and tries to change viewpoints through naming. She says to Marilla, “I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been...