ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 18, 1997 TAG: 9702180054
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: WILLIAM H. HONAN NEW YORK TIMES
In 1886, British writer Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a short story about a private detective named Sherrinford Holmes who, when speaking to his sidekick, a retired British army surgeon named Ormond Sacker, made light of his ingenious solutions to crime puzzles with the remark, ``Elementary, my dear Sacker.''
Something was wrong with that.
Neither name ``gave an inkling of character,'' Doyle later recalled. And so he fussed with the names until he hit upon the razor-sharp ``Sherlock'' and the stolid, trustworthy ``Watson'' - the latter taken from Doyle's friend and medical colleague, James E. Watson, M.D.
But onomastics (the study of proper names) has had about as much standing in academe as numerology or astrology until the publication of a new book called ``The Language of Names'' (Simon & Schuster). It was written by Justin Kaplan, the biographer, and his wife, Anne Bernays, the novelist, and is giving more prominence to what was once derided as merely an academic sideshow. Leonard Ashley, an emeritus professor of English at Brooklyn College and an authority on literary onomastics, said that ``The Language of Names'' is ``sure to increase the visibility - and respectability - of the scientific study of names.''
Although the book covers toponyms (place names), odonyms (street names), anemonyms (the names of winds and storms) eponyms (people, places and things named after other people, places and things) and more, the section arousing the most discussion among academicians analyzes literary names.
Novelists, dramatists and poets, Kaplan and Bernays say, know that ``names penetrate the core of our being and are a form of poetry, storytelling, magic and compressed history.''
Shakespeare's Shylock, the authors declare, ``is as packed with messages as a DNA molecule.''
Melville's Ishmael, freighted with biblical associations, is ``the one-word biography of a young sailor-scholar who, feeling November in his soul, signs on for a long voyage,'' they write.
Dickens was the foremost English-speaking master of onomastics, Kaplan and Bernays say, with characters like Seth Pecksniff, Sairey Gamp, Wilkins Micawber, Sir Mulberry Hawk, Ned and Charles Cheeryble, Thomas Gradgrind and Joseph Bounderby - all amalgams of sound, emotion and association.
Writing ``A Christmas Carol,'' Dickens tried out three other names for Bob Cratchit's crippled son before he got to the T's: Little Larry, Small Sam and Puny Pete.In a recent interview, Bernays said that John Updike told her that he had chosen the name Angstrom for the protagonist of his Rabbit novels both because it contained the word angst ``begging to be noticed'' and it suggested to him the first name of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard's philosophy - that ``to be human is INHERENTLY to be a problem'' - is the theme of the Rabbit tetralogy.
T.S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock, Kaplan said, was appropriated by the poet from Prufrock-Littau Co., a furniture store in St. Louis where he grew up. But to Eliot the name was far from mundane. Because it was capable of being punned as ``prude in a frock,'' it captured the fastidiousness of the character.
Similarly, Kaplan said, he discovered that Boris Pasternak first spotted the name Zhivago on a manhole cover. J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, he said, resulted from the writer's combining the last names of a friend named Holden and the actress Joan Caulfield.
Although Kaplan and Bernays have collaborated on essays and articles, ``The Language of Names'' is their first full-length book written together. Kaplan's biographies of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman both won the National Book Award, and the former won a Pulitzer prize. Bernays is the author of eight novels, including ``Growing Up Rich'' and ``Professor Romeo.''
LENGTH: Medium: 70 linesby CNB