Personal Nomenclature in the Plays of O'Neill

PERSONAL NOMENCLATURE IN THE PLAYS OF O'NEILL WHILE TOILING AT Mourning Becomes Electra O'Neill advised himself in the "Working Notes":1 . use characteristic names with some similarity to Greek onesfor main characters, at least-but don't strain after this and make it a stunt-no real importance, only convenience in picking -right names always tough job. Disregarding the special endeavor in Electra of creating names reminiscent of the Greek ones, may we not assume that the playwright's propensity for "characteristic names" holds true also for his work in general? The end of the quotation seems to imply a positive answer to this question. When a dramatist baptizes his fictitious creatures, he is not in the situation of a parent christening his own children. For the dramatist usually baptizes, not children, but grown-ups, who have developed a number of characteristic traits. Hence he can do for them what he cannot do for his own offspring: give them fitting names. Since all names have a meaning (although in some cases it is obscure or unknown even to the scholars in the field) it would seem natural if any dramatist, indeed any writer, made naming a distinctive element of characterization along with occupation, costume , gestures, etc. It is objected that the average theater-goer or reader of plays knows the meaning of but a few names, and that this inventiveness on the part of the author is consequently wasted on his public. The obvious answer to this is that some dramatists at least-and O'Neill is one of them-do not let their way of writing be influenced by the average theatre-goer. It is probably true that some names, notably those of minor characters, lack deeper significance. On the other hand, these (usually) flat characters lend themselves more easily to representative names than the ones drawn in the round, since the simple or simplified minds of the former can be at least approximately described by the two labels a full name provides. To characterize a round character 1 "O'Neill's Own Story of 'Electra' in the Making," New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 3> 1931. Reprinted as "Working Notes and Extracts from a Fragmentary Diary" in B. H. Clark, European Theories of the Drama (New York, 1959). pp. 530-536• 362 1966 NOMENCLATURE IN O'NEILL 363 correspondingly we would of course need a far longer list of names, far longer, in fact, than we would ever come across in real life. So, even if the playwright would naturally ponder considerably longer over the names of his central characters than over those of his peripheral ones, we must not conclude that the former are better suited to their bearers than the latter. If surnames usually carry less significant meanings than Christian names, there is a good reason for it. Unless the surname is given but to one character in the play, its meaning must be reasonably compatible with all who share it or else seem insignificant. This is indeed the dilemma in which most dramatists find themselves when writing about close relations sharing names but not ,dispositions. In a case like this the playwright has merely the choice either of making the surname distinctive of only one of the characters (normally the most important one) or of picking a name that does not seem to characterize anyone at all, in either case defeating his own purpose . Ibsen got around the difficulty in his own clever way when he let his heroine Hedda Gabler keep her maiden name, which connects her with her father-general. Thus the surname of her husband , Tesman, her contrast in nearly every respect, comes to characterize him alone. The mere form of a name is often telling. Despite their common national heritage there is a considerable difference, socially speaking, between Michael Cape, a playwright (Welded), on one hand and Mickey Maloy, a barkeep (A Touch of the Poet) and Mike Hogan, "a New England Irish Catholic Puritan, Grade B," (A Moon for the Misbegotten) on the other. ' Names may be selected on different grounds and may speak to us in different ways. For practical reasons we may distinguish between the following sources...