Naming Names

A good name is better than precious ointment Ecclesiastes 7 : 1

FROM THE WORD GO, nomenclature has been a serious business. In the Garden of Eden, filled with anonymous beasts of the field and fowl of the air, it represented Adam's first homework assignment. Juliet found time to agonize eloquently on the subject at great length. Even the famous Broadway lyricist T. S. Eliot `10 treated the concept with respect, calling it "a delicate matter" "It isn't just one of your holiday games," he added "You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter when I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES."

Now the topic has come to preoccupy residents of two undergraduate Houses, and understandably so In a university where every structure larger than a lunch-tray has a historic name attached to it, residents of North and South Houses have no such heritage in which to steep themselves; in recent weeks they have begun to speak out. "They aren't names--they're points on a compass," North House Master J. Woodland Hastings has bemoaned.

His complaint is not a light one, for a building's name can serve as an inspiration to its residents in all sorts of ways. Students in Quincy House have numerous occasions to invoke their home's namesake. President Josiah, including a colorful and well-attended exorcism ceremony at the beginning of each year. In Mather House, the editors of the student newsletter, the "Concrete Abstract," tip their hat to their domicile's eponym in their motto: "To Increase Mather's Spirit."

Other such examples are abundant. There is scarcely an alumnus of Canaday Hall whose sensibility has not been shaped by the life of Ward Murphy Canaday '07, the designer of the military jeep. In Stoughton Hall, social outcasts have gained perspective on their plight by recalling the legacy of Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton (Class of 1650), who presided at the Salem witch trials.

The list is not restricted to dormitories: many a visitor to the Busch-Reisinger Museum has found a certain spiritual succor in the memory of its chief donor, the St. Louis brewer tycoon Adolphus Busch.

CLEARLY Quad residents who are not fortunate enough to make their home in Currier House (as in Audrey Bruce Currier '56 who vanished with her husband when their small aircraft disappeared) have reason to feel deprived. But so far, the only strategy they have devised to combat their identity crisis has been to dream up possible new names for the Houses, and that is a tactic that will never work Without a doubt, the only way Derek Bok and Martina Horner will consent to renaming North and South Houses is if their institutional palms get greased in a big way--something on the order of $5 million would probably do the job.

That narrows the field of possible names quite a bit Raitt House and Keller House, for instance, two recently proposed monickers for South House (after a pair of past residents) go right out the window. In fact, activists in the two dormitories should be concerned that anyone in a position to rechristen their blandly titled homes would probably come up with an even more objectionable name. It's hard to imagine really enjoying master's sherries at Rockefeller House. Ford House, or Dupont House.

But a greater source of concern to Quad residents should be the possibility that a genuine billionaire will reach into his pocket and endow North or South House. That's when chaos will truly reign, because this segment of the population is completely insane. Howard Hughes is no longer with us, for which students at the Quad should count their blessings: he might have rolled one day and decided to rename one dorm or another Little Balls of String House.

But there's still Forrest Mars, the confectionary mogul, who reportedly opens up board meetings by leading the assembled executives in prayer: "God bless Mars Bars, God bless Milky Way bars...." If he gets a bright idea, J. Woodland Hastings will wake up in Snickers House.

And there's still Daniel K. Ludwig, the richest man in America, who's spent the last several years trying to build a little empire in the South American jungle. Can't you just see an unstable fellow like that picking up the phone and offering Harvard a zillion dollars to rename South House North House?