“To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world …” [Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince”]
“对我来说，你仍然只是一个小男孩，就像其他十万个小男孩一样。 我不需要你。 而你，就你而言，不需要我。 对你来说，我只不过是一只狐狸，就像其他十万只狐狸一样。 但如果你驯服了我，那么我们将需要彼此。 对我来说，你将是全世界独一无二的。 对你来说，我将是全世界独一无二的……”[Antoine de Saint-Exupéry，《小王子》]
Naming is to humans as photosynthesis is to plants. It is but one of the fundamental attributes of the human condition, yet perhaps one of the most curious and endearing. On a video call with my brother last week, he took a gulp of scalding hot tea from a mug I recognised. “Hey, that’s mine,” I said, admiring once again the sheer volume of it, the very thing that had caught my eye on the charity shop shelf all those years ago. But we both know that the mug belongs to him now. After all, he was the one who named it; Big Brown. Indeed.
命名对人类就像光合作用对植物一样。 它只是人类状况的基本属性之一，但也许是最令人好奇和可爱的属性之一。 上周和我哥哥视频通话时，他从我认出的杯子里喝了一口热乎乎的热茶。 「嘿，那是我的，」我說，再次欣賞它的大量，正是多年前在慈善商店貨架上吸引我眼球的東西。 但我们都知道这个杯子现在属于他了。 毕竟，是他给它起名字的人；大布朗。 的确。
We name “to identify, symbolise, refer, describe, simplify, organise and, most importantly, to tame”, says the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Cave paintings from prehistoric times universally include handprints, much like these childhood relics parents preserve from kindergarten; clay imprints of baby hands made long before dexterity allows for the act of writing. There is something inherently human about leaving a mark.
《大英百科全书》说，我们命名为“识别、象征、参考、描述、简化、组织，最重要的是，驯服”。 史前時代的洞穴壁畫普遍包括手印，就像父母在幼兒園保留的這些童年文物一樣；早在靈巧之前就留下了嬰兒手的粘土印。 留下印记本质上是人性的东西。
Some of us shorten our names. Some of us cast them off and adopt new ones.
我们中的一些人缩短了我们的名字。 我们中的一些人抛弃了他们，并收养了新的。
Nowadays, we name cars, (Khalesi Car), musical instruments (Black Mamba), plants (this I have never done, most likely because I will inevitably end up killing them, more on that to follow), pets (Gabo, Valentina, Frida), toys (Foxy Loxy, Lula); the list is endless but not without its limitations. We do not tend to name livestock, for example, and there is a good reason for this.
如今，我们命名汽车，（Khalesi Car）、乐器（Black Mamba）、植物（我从来没有做过，很可能是因为我最终不可避免地会杀死它们，更多）、宠物（Gabo、Valentina、Frida）、玩具（Foxy Loxy、Lula）；这个列表是无穷无尽的，但并非没有它的局限性。 例如，我们不倾向于给牲畜命名，这是有充分理由的。
Nicholas Epley, Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago, ascribes this tendency to name inanimate objects to human cognitive and emotional intelligence. Known as anthropomorphism, we name objects with which we have formed an emotional attachment or consider as extensions of our identity. Hence my brother’s naming of the tea mug, and my reticence to name my houseplants. If each of my plants had a name, then each death would mean a constant funeral in my heart, much the same as farmers do not name animals earmarked for the slaughter.
芝加哥大学行为科学教授Nicholas Epley将这种命名无生命的物体的倾向归因于人类的认知和情商。 被称为拟人化，我们命名了与我们形成情感依恋或视为我们身份的延伸的物体。 因此，我哥哥给茶杯起了名字，而我则不想给我的室内植物起名字。 如果我的每一株植物都有一个名字，那么每一次死亡都意味着我心中不断的葬礼，就像农民不给指定用于屠宰的动物命名一样。
Needless to say, some objects are rarely named; the lavatory for example, or the nose hair trimmer, which may be because they are rarely referenced in public discourse or because of their expendability.
不用说，有些物品很少被命名；例如洗手间或鼻毛修剪器，这可能是因为它们在公共话语中很少被提及，或者因为它们的可消耗性。
Though naming a boat or a coffee machine may seem like a mere eccentricity, it actually goes far deeper, revealing a need to bond with and exert control over the named object. Or person.
虽然给船或咖啡机命名似乎只是一种古怪，但实际上它更深入，揭示了与命名对象建立联系并对其施加控制的必要性。 或者人。
We cannot know the earliest human names. I like to imagine cavemen names, Ug, and Thunk and Fred, but these have been lost to us. The spoken word is ephemeral. Charles Darwin postulated that the earliest humans communicated with each other by singing, just like birds. Imagine that dawn chorus!
我们不可能知道最早的人类名字。 我喜欢想象穴居人的名字，Ug、Thunk和Fred，但这些都失去了。 口语是短暂的。 查尔斯·达尔文假设，最早的人类就像鸟类一样，通过唱歌相互交流。 想象一下那个黎明的合唱！
All we have conclusive evidence of, however, is that which has been preserved in writing.
然而，我们只有确凿的证据是书面保存下来的。
One of the earliest names ever recorded comes from Sumar, in Ancient Mesopotamia, where some of the first written records were discovered carved in clay tablets. These detailed the economic transactions of barley, and are thought to be signed by “Kushim”. Some scholarly debate arises as to whether Kushim is actually a name, or a role, like “slave” or “barley counter”, but in that case, why sign it at all? So, there you have it. Kushim; the very first name recorded in writing in our species.
有史以来最早的名字之一来自古代美索不达米亚的苏马尔，在那里发现了一些刻在粘土板上的最早的书面记录。 这些详细介绍了大麦的经济交易，被认为是由“Kushim”签署的。 关于Kushim实际上是一个名字还是一个角色，比如“奴隶”或“大麦计数器”，出现了一些学术辩论，但在这种情况下，为什么要签署它？ 所以，你拥有它。 Kushim；我们物种中第一个书面记录的名字。
Most ancient peoples, like Kushim, made do with mononymic names, much like “Madonna”, or “Cher”; though in Ancient Greece these were more like “Sophocles”, “Euripedes” or “Pythagoras”. As population grew, this mononym was expanded to allow for further identification or specification of which Pythagoras the speaker was referring to. By adding “Son of Mnesarchus” to the name, the listener could then be sure of which Pythagoras the speaker was on about, assuming that they stuck around for long enough to listen to that mouthful. This is known as a patronym.
大多数古代民族，如库希姆，都使用单名，很像“麦当娜”或“切尔”；尽管在古希腊，这些名字更像“索福克勒斯”、“埃里佩德斯”或“皮塔哥拉斯”。 随着人口的增长，这个单名被扩展，以便进一步识别或指定说话者所指的Pythagoras。 通过在名字中添加“Mnesarchus的儿子”，听众可以确定演讲者在谈论哪个Pythagoras，假设他们停留的时间足够长，可以听那一口。 这被称为父名。
Back in Ancient Athens and other Greek states, patronymic names; those related to the male ancestry, have been in use since approximately 3000 BCE, though raiding hoards and book burners after that time have erased many valuable cultural artefacts. They also form the basis for most naming practices around the globe.
早在古代雅典和其他希腊国家，父名；那些与男性祖先有关的名字，大约自公元前3000年以来一直在使用，尽管在那之后，突袭藏宝和焚书厂已经抹去了许多有价值的文物。 它们也构成了全球大多数命名实践的基础。
Prefixes “Mac” (son of) and “Ní ” (daughter of) are common in Gaelic surnames and have been recorded as early as the 10th century CE in Ireland and Scotland. They signify the practice of creating surnames by designating the child as begotten of the father. My surname in Gaelic is Ni Ríain, daughter of Ryan. Perhaps for this reason, in this particular case, I prefer the anglicised version.
前缀“Mac”（的儿子）和“Ní”（女儿）在盖尔语姓氏中很常见，早在公元10世纪就在爱尔兰和苏格兰就有记录。 它们表示通过指定孩子为父亲的子女来创建姓氏的做法。 我的盖尔语姓氏是Ni Ríain，Ryan的女儿。 也许出于这个原因，在这种情况下，我更喜欢英文版本。
The Ancient Greeks also paved the way, in written texts at least, as influencers when it came to the use of demotic surnames, those based on “deme” or a particular place. Diogenes of Sinope is one example of a birthplace used as a demotic surname. Of course, many texts which would have completed the holes in our knowledge were set aflame by raiding Viking and Barbarian tribes in the period between the late 5th to the 10th century in Europe.
至少在书面文本中，古希腊人也作为影响者，在使用基于“deme”或特定地点的姓氏时，作为影响者铺平了道路。 西诺普的第欧根尼是用作德米特姓氏的出生地的一个例子。 当然，在5世纪末到10世纪的欧洲，入侵维京人和野蛮部落，许多会填补我们知识漏洞的文本被放火了。
Regardless of this, it would appear that surnames were not common in Europe until around the 13th century, many of which were based on a location; Brooke, Marsh, Hill, again using the demotic and patronymic forms of surname generation.
尽管如此，直到13世纪左右，姓氏似乎在欧洲并不常见，其中许多姓氏都基于位置；Brooke、Marsh、Hill，再次使用姓氏生成的demotic和父名形式。
Though this may seem like a rather swarthy leap through history, surnames were not commonplace among the general populace in Africa, and Korea or Japan until the 18th and 19th Centuries respectively. The reasons for this require a whole ‘nother ramble.
虽然这似乎是历史上一个相当黝黑的飞跃，但姓氏在非洲、韩国或日本的普通民众中并不常见，直到18世纪和19世纪。 其原因需要另外胡言乱语。
Interestingly, it is here in the Middle Kingdom that one of the few examples of matronymic naming systems exists, where surnames were generated from the mother’s name. Historians posit that in China, surnames first existed in noble clans, the surnames of which use the female radical “女” in the Mandarin character for surname, for example Ji (姬), Jiang (姜), Yao (姚) and Yíng (嬴). This system was phased out in favor of a patronymic one cerca 1000 BCE, with all names thereafter reflecting the patrilineal legacy.
有趣的是，在中王国，少数几个母名命名系统的例子之一，姓氏是从母亲的名字中产生的。 历史学家认为，在中国，姓氏最早存在于贵族氏族中，其姓氏使用普通话字母中的女性词根“女”作为姓氏，例如姬、姜、姚和嬴。 这个系统在公元前1000年被逐步淘汰，取而是一个父名，此后所有的名字都反映了父系遗产。
Curiously, this trend is beginning to reemerge in recent years, according to Xu Qi, a Nanjing based sociologist. The reasons are manifold; an emerging feminist campaign for matrilineal naming practices, the increasing prevalence of female children within one-child families and the increasing presence of women in the demographic, educational and political spheres, to name but a few.
奇怪的是，据南京社会学家徐琪称，近年来这种趋势开始重新出现。 原因多种多样；新兴的女权主义母系命名实践运动，独生子女家庭中女童的日益普遍，以及妇女在人口、教育和政治领域的存在日益增加，仅举几例。
A handprint. A yoke. A sign of love and belonging. A means of self-actualisation or revealing who’s your daddy. Whatever way you look at it, the act of naming is so very human, it transcends the boundaries of time and place, connecting us to the past, the present, and to each other. Making us, and our cars and pets and mugs “unique in all the world.”
手印。 枷锁。 爱和归属感的标志。 一种自我实现或揭示谁是你的爸爸的手段。 无论你如何看待它，命名的行为都是如此人性化，它超越了时间和地点的界限，将我们与过去、现在和彼此联系起来。 使我们、我们的汽车、宠物和马克杯“在全世界都是独一的”。
