Regarding names: Selection, combination, writing, image

Abstract

When discussing proper names, the traditional focus has predominantly centered on their meaning, while the composition of these names has received less attention. Initially, we can identify two perspectives. Firstly, the materiality of a proper name aligns with that of other linguistic forms, all of which can ascend to or descend from the onomastic function through the services of antonomasia. However, in specific contexts, the material aspect of a name can assume unusual significance. This includes considerations of objects: the arrangement of phonemes and sounds, their articulation, and auditory reception; the arrangement of graphemes and visual traits across diverse mediums (such as fabrics, bark, painting canvases, or urban scaffolding), encompassing various stylistic, typographic, and calligraphic executions, influencing both execution and visual perception. Moreover, phenomena encompass the reinterpretation of such data into new graphic, auditory, and linguistic forms, characterized by novel configurations, resemantizations, transformations, and substitutions. This occurs through techniques like interpretatio nominis, anagrammatics, rebussistics, cryptography, and pseudonyms. Centuries-old traditions initially reignited interest in the materiality of names, predating the contexts where this phenomenon gained new relevance. These include the 20th-century advent of branding (names as trademarks) and the significance of chirographic signatures in the digital age. The resurgence of inked materiality within names appears to signal a necessity, even legally, for establishing new connections between text and the body, resembling a sort of biosemiotics of the text.