The Importance of What We Call Things

Sometimes I wonder if I had been named let say James Jefferson Whitmire instead of Harvey Lee Whitmire would my life have been different. They change the names of movie stars for a reason. Cary Grant may not have been quite as successful as Archibald MacLeish, but I reckon we will never know that for sure. What made me start thinking about all this was Willard Wannabunk, one of our Harper philosophers, bringing up the subject of nomenclature down at the cafe yesterday morning. He was upset because his wife's doctor had told her she needed a "his-torectomy." And that in addition she was being treated for "him-rhoids" (a little too much information for my taste.) Then he went off on the fact that all his wife's hormones were out of whack. He figures that if we wanted to get real about all these things we should be more specific. There should be "her-mones" and "his-mone" since they are so different. He ended his diatribe with his contention, "If it's important enough for towels, it's important enough for hormones." Hmmmm.